rosalita aims at 75 in 2011

This is my first time participating in any of the challenge threads, so I'll just apologize in advance if I go against any of the group conventions. Corrections, suggestions, and comments always welcome!

I like to read pretty much anything, but if I were to name "favorite" genres, they'd probably be mysteries, historical fiction and nonfiction and biographies. I've also made a vow to go back and read some of the many classics I've missed along the way.




January 2011
1. Blizzard! The Storm That Changed America, Jim Murphy. ★★★½
2. The Justice Game, Randy Singer. ★★★½
3. Innocent, Scott Turow. ★★★★
4. Doomsday Book, Connie Willis. ★★★
5. The Confession, John Grisham. ★★★
6. South of Broad, Pat Conroy. ★★★★
7. Mossy Creek, various authors. ★★
8. Along Came a Spider, James Patterson. ★★★½
9. Every Last One, Anna Quindlen. ★★★★½
10. The Girls from Ames, Jeffrey Zaslow. ★★★

February 2011
11. Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese.★★★★
12. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling.★★★★
13. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins. ★★★½
14. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen..★★★★
15. Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand. ★★★★
16. Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins.★★★
16½. Blockade Billy, Stephen King (novella). ★★★½
17½. Chasing the Dime, Michael Connelly. ★★
18½. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Tom Franklin. .★★★½
19½. Kiss the Girls, James Patterson. ★★★½

March 2011
20½. Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins. ★★½
21½. Composed, Rosanne Cash. ★★★½
22½. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling. ★★★★
23½. Ford County, John Grisham. ★★½
24½. Naked, David Sedaris. ★★★
25½. Heart and Soul, Maeve Binchy. ★★★½
26½. The False Friend, Myla Goldberg. ★★★★
27½. Running the Books, Avi Steinberg. ★★★★

April 2011
28½. Black Heels to Tractor Wheels, Ree Drummond. ★★★½
29½. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson. ★★★★
30½. People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks. ★★★★★
31½.Clara and Mr. Tiffany, Susan Vreeland. ★★★★
32½. Minding Frankie, Maeve Binchy. ★★★

May 2011
33½ The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, Erik Larson. ★★★★
34. Playing Hardball, Madison Hayes. ★½
35. Backstage Pass, Olivia Cunning. ★★★
36. A Little Harmless Sex, Melissa Schroeder. ★★½
37. The Wicked House of Rohan, Anne Stuart. ★★
38. The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell. .★★★½
39. The Tudors: The Complete Story of England's Most Notorious Dynasty, G.J. Meyer. ★★★½

June 2011
40. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling. ★★★★
41. American Sphinx, Joseph J. Ellis. ★★★½
42. Shakespeare: The World as Stage, Bill Bryson. ★★★½
43. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling. ★★★★
44. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling. ★★★½
45. The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman. ★★★
46. Private Life, Jane Smiley. ★★½
47. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling. ★★★★
48. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling. ★★★½
49. The Girl With the Long Green Heart, Lawrence Block. ★★★½
50. Duplicate Keys, Jane Smiley. ★★★½
51. One Shot, Lee Child. ★★★
52. March, Geraldine Brooks. ★★★

July 2011
53. Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood. ★★★★
54. Run, Ann Patchett. ★★
55. Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman. ★★★
56. The Weight of Silence, Heather Gudenkauf. ★★★★
57. Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri. ★★★½
58. Stephen Fry in America, Stephen Fry. ★★★
59. The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly. ★★★
60. Gone, Baby, Gone, Dennis Lehane ★★★
62. Prayers for Rain, Dennis Lehane ★★★

August 2011
63. Moonlight Mile, Dennis Lehane ★★★
64. Killing Floor, Lee Child ★★★½
65. He Stopped Loving Her Today, Jack Isenhour ★★★★
66. Caleb's Crossing, Geraldine Brooks ★★★½
67. The Informationist, Taylor Stevens ★★★
68. Anthem, Ayn Rand .★★½
69. Die Trying, Lee Child ★★★½
70. Perfect Reader, Maggie Pouncey ★★★
71. Sacred, Dennis Lehane ★★★
72. Sister, Rosamund Lupton ★★★½
73. Doc, Mary Doria Russell .★★★★
74. A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan ★★★★

September 2011
75. The Scarecrow, Michael Connelly.★★★
76. My Latest Grievance, Elinor Lippman ★★★½
77. In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson ★★★★
78. Darkness Take My Hand, Dennis Lehane ★★★
79. The Plague of Doves, Louise Erdrich ★★★
80. A Drink Before the War, Dennis Lehane ★★★
81. Too Many Women, Rex Stout ★★★½
82. The Red Box, Rex Stout ★★★½
83. In the Woods, Tana French ★★★½
84. The Likeness, Tana French ★★★½
85. The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood, Jane Leavy ★★★
86. The Sisters Brothers, Patrick DeWitt ★★½
87. My Reading Life, Pat Conroy ★★★

October 2011
88. Thunderstruck, Erik Larson ★★★
89. The Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore ★★★½
90. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson ★★★½
91. Tripwire, Lee Child ★★★½
92. Heidegger's Glasses, Thaisa Frank ★★
93. Life, Keith Richards ★★★½
94. Happily Ever After, Susan May Warren ★★½
95. 22 Britannia Road, Amanda Hodgkinson ★★★
96. One Good Turn, Kate Atkinson ★★★

November 2011
97. When Will There Be Good News, Kate Atkinson ★★★½
98. The Reader, Bernhard Schlink ★★★½
99. Columbine, Dave Cullen ★★★★
100. Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin, Calvin Trillin ★★★½
101. Running Blind, Lee Child ★★★½

December 2011
102. Echo Burning, Lee Child ★★★
103. Without Fail, Lee Child ★★★
104. The Last Werewolf, Glen Duncan ★★★★
105. Jack & Jill, James Patterson ★★★
106. Whither Thou Goest, I Will Go, Naomi Dathan ★★
107. Persuader, Lee Child ★★½
108. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst ★★★
109. Mudbound, Hillary Jordan ★★★★½
110. Cat & Mouse, James Patterson ★★★
111. Sand Sharks, Margaret Maron. ★★★★
112. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen ★★★★½

Re-Shelved (Abandoned Without Prejudice)
Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
Atlantic: The Biography of an Ocean, Simon Winchester
The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, William Kamkwamba
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Jamie Ford

Welcome to the group, Julia! You will learn pretty rapidly that we really have no group conventions here :)

Welcome to the 75ers, Julia. I look forward to hearing about what you're reading in 2011.

Welcome! You're doing fine so far! :)

My first completed read for 2011:



1. Blizzard: The Storm That Changed America, Jim Murphy. This is a nonfiction account of the blizzard of March 1888, which affected pretty much the entire East Coast from North Carolina to Maine. Murphy chooses several individuals in a variety of locations (but most in New York City) to illustrate the ways in which the storm affected people's lives. I enjoyed the book, although I would have liked a bit more development of the "storm that changed America" bit. It's there, but sort of tucked in at the end like an afterthought.

#5: I read The Children's Blizzard last year, which is about the same storm, and enjoyed it, so I will have to look for the Murphy book too. Thanks for the recommendation, Julia!

Welcome Roselita. Looks like you're off to a good start already. I love blizzardy stories so I've wishlisted The Storm that changed America.

Stasia, I will have to check out The Children's Blizzard. It's really amazing to look back at that time and realize that no matter how much we complain about the accuracy of today's weather forecasters, there was a time when people had virtually no idea what was heading their way. That aspect of Blizzard! reminded me of Isaac's Storm, about the Galveston hurricane of 1900, which I read a few years ago.

Lynda, I'll be interested to know what you think of it!

#8: I enjoyed The Children's Blizzard a lot. Let me know if your local library does not have it and I will loan you my copy.

  

2. The Justice Game, Randy Singer.
3. Innocent, Scott Turow.

It was not my original intention to read these two legal thrillers back to back, but circumstances conspired to make it so. I downloaded the Kindle version of the Singer book for free as part of Amazon's limited-time offers, and shortly after starting to read it, I received a notice from our local library that the e-book version of the Turow book, which I had been on the waiting list for, was available. In the end, though, reading them consecutively gave me an interesting chance to compare the two authors' styles.

I was not at all familiar with Singer's other works, of which there are apparently quite a few. The story unfolded smoothly, and the characters were pretty well-drawn and interesting. The premise was unusual. Justice Inc. is an organization that conducts "shadow trials" of big cases in order to come up with the expected outcome in time for its corporate clients to sell/buy stock and make a profit. When two of its "alumni" lawyers meet up on opposite sides of a landmark gun-control case, they find themselves being manipulated by a blackmailer and have to find a way to do what he commands in order to protect their personal secrets.

It's a sad commentary on our times that I found the idea of an organization such as Justice Inc. completely plausible, but my credulity was strained at the coincidence that two young lawyers would both not only be alumni of the same organization but also have deep, dark secrets in their past that would tempt them to cooperate with a blackmailer influencing the case. Far more interesting was the actual case, a debate on whether gun manufacturers are responsible when criminals use their product to commit a crime. In an introduction, Singer says he was at pains not to promote one side over the other, and he does allow both sides to make strong points. In a real-life nod to the Justice Inc. he created for the narrative, Singer says he presented the case to his own "shadow jury", and the outcome of the book's trial reflects the decision of that focus group. Overall, it was an interesting, enjoyable read, although it felt a bit preachy at times. I would definitely consider reading other books written by Singer.

Turning to the Turow book, I had higher expectations. I read Presumed Innocent when it was first released many years ago, and knew that this book was a sequel of sorts, focusing once again on then-prosecutor and now-judge Rusty Sabich. I will confess to doing a quick fact check on Wikipedia, because while I remembered that Presumed Innocent ended with an explosive twist, I couldn't quite remember what it was! (This is much more a commentary on my lousy memory than on Turow's writing.) But once I refreshed my memory on the essential points, I dove into Innocent and managed to consume it in relatively short time.

Turow creates memorable characters, but where he really shines is the legal back and forth, both inside and outside the courtroom. Innocent alternates viewpoint between Rusty, his son Nat, his former law clerk Anna, and Tommy Molto, the current prosecuting attorney who has a long personal and professional history with Rusty. Like the first book, this one also revolves around a startling twist, not quite as jaw-dropping but one that passes the test of making sense even after you've finished the book. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and look forward to reading more from Turow.

Nice reviews, Julia!

Julia, I can add my recommendation to alcottacre's about The Children's Blizzard, which I read some time back. It focuses more on the plains states and what happened there during the storm. I'm currently reading The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan, which is about the Forest Service and the northwest fire of 1910 which defined it. Somewhere I also have Krakatoa by Simon Winchester in the stacks, which is a study of the volcano disaster. Seems I'm reading more "disaster" books related to weather since my daughter started studying emergency management. Hmmmm.

Thanks, Stasia. I'm on the waiting list for the new John Grisham book, which should pretty much fill my legal-thriller quota for 2011!

Laurie, thanks for those recommendations. I, too, enjoy a good weather disaster book. Must be from living in the tumultuous weather of Iowa!

My mother's father (born in 1878) liked to talk about that blizzard! He was ten, so it was probably just the hugest thing. They were living in center city Phila then and getting food -- especially milk for the children -- was an all day ordeal, even for a well-off family, there just wasn't any to be had.

Wow, that's very interesting, Lucy. I think only one milk train was able to make it to NYC during the whole blizzard, so lack of milk for the babes was a real problem there as well. I bet your grandfather had lots of good stories to tell.

4. Doomsday Book, Connie Willis.

I picked up this book after reading the discussion of it in the Historical Fiction thread. The premise is that sometime in the near future (2050 or so) time travel is possible, and most of it (all of it? not clear from the narrative) is done by academic historians to learn more about the time period they study. Some centuries are off limits, though, because of their inherent danger. One of those periods is the Middle Ages, but a young Oxford historian manages to get approval to be sent back to 1320 anyway, on the grounds that it is well before the Black Plague reaches England. Things go awry, and she ends up smack dab in the middle of the Plague, although she doesn't know it at first, and neither do her handlers back in the present time, who are battling their own plague of sorts.

I enjoyed this book for the most part, but there were several flaws that keep me from fully endorsing it. First, the author is (to my mind) unnecessarily coy about telling the reader that Kivrin has landed in the wrong year. If a reader had somehow never heard or read a single word about the book, the big ta-da reveal might be effective, but it instead seems annoying if you know anything at all (i.e., if you've read even the publisher's summary on Amazon, for example). Another problem was that much of the present-day plot revolves around the inability to communicate, complete with jammed phone lines and no one having voice mail. It's hard to believe that in 2050 we will have solved time travel but not phone circuitry! And of course, from the vantage point of 2010 the idea of time travel being not only possible but somewhat "old hat" by 2050 seems nearly laughable. The book was written in 1993, however, so that last nitpick is not really the author's fault.

Despite these fairly serious flaws, I am interested in reading the other books in this series. I found the characters themselves to be engaging, and I appreciated the ending, which was not the usual "rescue and happy ever after" scenario. I'd like to see how the characters process what happened to them and how they move forward.

5. The Confession, John Grisham.

I wasn't really looking to read another legal-eagle book after recently reading The Justice Game and Innocent, and this book may have suffered in comparison to those. In brief, on the eve of execution of Donte Drumm for a murder he swears he never committed, a serial rapist surfaces to confess to a Lutheran minister that he is the real killer. But will he agree to make his story public, will anyone believe him, and will it be enough to prevent Donte's execution? Grisham's characters tend to be fairly one-dimensional, and I never felt like I knew any of them well enough to really feel engaged with their struggle. At the same time, the book is unabashedly anti-death penalty (to the point of heavy-handedness at times), and the look inside a dysfunctional justice system was horrifying, to say the least.

Hi There

I'm compiling a list of birthdays of our group members. If you haven't done so already, would you mind stopping by this thread and posting yours.

Thanks.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/105833

6. South of Broad, Pat Conroy.

It's been quite a while since I've read a Pat Conroy novel, and I was happy to see that he has lost none of the ability to capture my imagination with his vividly drawn characters. In South of Broad, the city of Charleston is as much or more of a character than any of the people who inhabit it. I have never been to Charleston, but I can't imagine visiting without taking this book along to put me in the scene. I had somewhat of a hard time understanding how this particular group of friends managed to remain friends for more than 20 years given their internal frictions with each other, but Conroy's masterful writing and plotting managed to overcome this flaw. The denouement was satisfying, if not quite as shocking as Conroy may have hoped (I had guessed the big twist early on). I'm looking forward to backtracking and picking up the Conroy books I missed between Beach Music and this one.

I absolutely love Charleston and will be heading there in May. I will definitely have to read this before I head down! My Reading Life was one of my favorites of last month.

I have My Reading Life on my TBR list. I'd be interested to hear how the real city of Charleston compares to Conroy's description when you get back.

#19: I enjoyed that one too, the first novel of Conroy's I ever read. I am glad to see you liked it as well, Julia!

7. Mossy Creek, Deborah Smith et al.

Not much to say about this one. It was a free download for Kindle; I was hoping for Bailey White but got Barely Amusing instead.

8. Along Came a Spider, James Patterson.

One of my co-workers is an enthusiastic James Patterson fan, and has been urging me to give his Alex Cross series a try. I have a vague memory of having read one of the later books and enjoying it, but I wanted to go back to the beginning and get the full background on the characters. This is the first book in the series, and does an effective job of drawing the main characters: Detective/psychologist Alex Cross, his partner, and his family. All of them are engaging characters that i felt I'd be happy to spend more time with.

The plot, featuring a psychotic child kidnapper and murderer, was less successful. There's little suspense in discovering the bad guy; the twist comes with trying to prove whether he committed the crimes while sane or as a "split" personality. Having just read a handful of well-written legal thrillers, I found Patterson's trial scenes to be less convincing, and I realized I didn't really care about the technicalities of whether the killer was sane or not since he obviously committed the crimes. More interesting was the smattering of political intrigue within the Washington, D.C., police department and its interactions with the FBI and other agencies. I hope that area is more fully developed in future Cross novels.

#23: Sounds like one I can skip.

#24: I liked the Cross series when I first started it and then ran out of enthusiasm for it.

Stasia, I'll be curious to see if I have the same reaction to the Cross series as you did. I think series are very, very difficult to sustain at a high level over a long period of time. Few authors have done it as well as Rex Stout, in my opinion, who is probably my all-time favorite mystery writer. I could (and have) re-read the Nero Wolfe novels and novellas over and over again. Robert B. Parker did reasonably well with the Spenser series, but it definitely had some low points and grating "set pieces" as the series progressed.

#26: It is very hard for an author to sustain a long-running series I have found. I will be curious about your reaction to the Patterson series too. The only one of his series that I have stuck with is the Woman's Murder Club series.

9. Every Last One, Anna Quindlen.

Anna Quindlen is a very talented writer. I knew that from reading her newspaper and magazine columns through the years, and from reading one of her earlier novels, Black and Blue, which looks domestic violence square in the eye and lives to tell about it. So I maybe should have expected that the lull I fell into when I started reading Every Last One wouldn't last. Through the first 100-plus pages of this novel, I found myself getting a little impatient with what seemed like a typical Mom's Midlife Crisis book, with the mom in question, MaryBeth, juggling her landscape business with her less-than-passionate marriage and her oh-so-modern kids: the teenage girl who yearns to be a Writer and the fraternal twin boys who couldn't be less alike.

But even when the plot seemed a bit pedestrian, Quindlen's turns of phrase were anything but, such as when MaryBeth contemplates how her growing children and husband no longer need her the way they once did:

Sometimes I feel as though the entire point of a woman's life is to fall in love with people who will leave her. The only variation I can see is the ones who fight the love, and the ones who fight the leaving. It's too late for me to be the first, and I'm trying not to be the second."

But just when I was figuratively rolling my hand in a "c'mon, get on with it" gesture, Quindlen turns the whole setup on its head in a way that left me gasping out loud, in a good way. I won't say more about that; I've already said too much (though apparently not as much as the dust jacket blurb, which many reviewers have cited as an unwelcome spoiler). In fact, don't run out and read Every Last One right now. Wait a few months until all you remember is that I told you that you must read it, but you don't remember why. You can thank me later.

10. The Girls from Ames, Jeffrey Zaslow.

I really wanted to love this book. It's about a group of women who grew up together in a small Midwestern city in the 1960s and 1970s, and the ways in which their friendship has endured and changed through the years. In other words, it's about me — well, not me but my generation, the women who surrounded me throughout my own coming-of-age in a small Midwestern city.

Here's the thing, though: What I said about it not being about me? That's all too true. The girls from Ames are a group of 11 girls/women who were pretty popular, pretty wild, and pretty clannish about letting outsiders into the golden circle. They even turn on their own occasionally, as when a subset of the girls gets together one night in high school to carefully enumerate to one of the others all the ways in which she is simply not smart enough, pretty enough, or cool enough to be part of their group without making some drastic changes. It read like a scene out of a horror novel to me, which made it all the more dumbfounding to learn that the girl who was the center of all that vitriol is still part of the group! Nothing about staying friends with people who treated you so cruelly makes sense to me.

I enjoyed the nostalgia of the pop-culture touchstones sprinkled throughout The Girls from Ames. But to be honest, I kind of hated the girls from Ames themselves. And after reading about what they were like in high school and beyond, I'm pretty sure they would have hated me, too.

11. Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese.

Twin boys, born in tragic and somewhat mysterious circumstances at an Ethiopian hospital to an Indian nun and an English surgeon, are raised by other doctors at the hospital and become doctors themselves. Despite being twins, Shiva and Marion are very different from each other, and those differences set into motion events in early childhood that haunt them both well into adulthood. The first part of the book is set in Ethiopia, and it is a fascinating look at a place and a culture that I know little bout. The narrative moves with the adult Marion to America, and while the experience of a foreign doctor trying to incorporate into the American medical system is interesting, it didn't quite grab me in the same way. Still, this is a book well worth reading, with compelling characters and a lot to say about medicine, magic, and the power of belief.

    

13. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins.
16. Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins.
20½. Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins.

A friend recommended these to me, and I ended up listening to the audiobooks narrated by Carolyn McCormick. The stars tell the story, really. I found the first book, The Hunger Games to be a very interesting examination of a dystopia where our current obsession with reality television has degenerated to the point of the government staging fights to the death among groups of teenagers, one boy and one girl from each of the 12 "districts" in the country of Panam, which is what remains of the United States. The lead character, a teenage girl named Katniss, was sympathetic and believable, and the resolution was satisfying if a bit abrupt.

Catching Fire picks up Katniss' story back in District 12, where she learns her actions at the end of The Hunger Games have displeased the leaders of Panam. The first half of the book is a drawn-out contrivance that ends with Katniss back in the fighting arena. Despite the fact that the scenes in the Arena were the best and most compelling, it felt like a cheat that Katniss ended up back there. The book would have been more successful had another teen taken her place, I think.

Mockingjay wraps up the trilogy with Katniss as the public face of the districts' rebellion against the Capitol. It suffers from the complete lack of any Arena scenes (although the fighting in the Capitol comes closest), which were the strongest parts of both Hunger Games and Catching Fire. Ultimately, not only is Katniss still the focus despite being on the outskirts of the action for most of the book, the civil war seems much too easily won to be believable. Both of these things are significant weaknesses that lead Mockingjay to be the weakest book of the three.

It's difficult for me to give these books a fair review, since they were written for a young adult audience, and my young-adult days are all too far behind me. Still, I found them to be mostly worthwhile reads, and Collins does have some interesting points to make regarding consumer culture and popular media, although both are themes I would have loved to see her explore further. I think Collins' biggest mistake was the decision to stick with Katniss as the narrator of all three books. Shifting focus to other characters in the second and third books, while still keeping Katniss in the picture, would have improved the series quite a bit.

15. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand.

What an astonishing book Laura Hillenbrand has written, about the experiences of a world-class American runner who winds up in a Japanese POW camp during World War II. Louie Zamperini was a wild boy growing up in early 20th-century California until he discovered his talent for running. He channeled his energies into reaching ever-higher athletic goals, including competing (though not winning) at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Louie is training for the 1940 Olympics when World War II breaks out; he joins the Army Air Corps and eventually is sent to the Pacific theater after Pearl Harbor. He survives a number of harrowing close calls, but when his bomber crashes into the Pacific with only himself and two other men surviving on a life raft, it seems his luck has finally run out. What follows is an unbelievable story of survival — survival for weeks at sea, survival in a series of Japanese POW camps, and survival over the demons that haunt him even after he returns home. An unforgettable story about an unforgettable man.

17½. Chasing the Dime, Michael Connelly.

A computer genius is on the verge of hooking a major financial backer for his nanotechnology firm when a strange coincidence — the new phone number he's issued when he and his wife split turns out to have belonged to a now-missing high-rent call girl — threatens everything he's worked so hard to achieve. This book never clicked for me. Part of it may be that I am pretty much a science idiot, and there is a lot of scientific babble slowing down the advancement of the plot. But the main reason was that I simply did not find it believable that such a smart guy, with everything on the line professionally, would allow himself to be distracted by a weird amateur-detective turn on behalf of a woman he had never met.

18½. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Tom Franklin.

A fascinating character study of race in small-town Mississippi, although not in the way you might expect. As boys, Larry and Silas become friends when Silas and his mother move into a cabin belonging to Larry's father. Their fragile friendship is shattered when Silas, who's black, goes off to college and Larry, who's white, stays in their hometown despite being suspected of murdering a missing teenage girl. Their paths cross again as grownups when Silas, now the town constable, investigates the disappearance of another young woman and suspicion once again falls on Larry. Readers looking for an uncomplicated happy ending will be disappointed; what Franklin offers instead is a cautious hope in the future of interracial friendship in general, and for Larry and Silas in particular.

Hi rosalita (you've got me humming that Springsteen song), I've tracked you down and left a star so I can find you again. You've read a lot of books that are on my wishlist - Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Unbroken and Cutting for Stone just to mention some of your recent reads.

Thanks for stopping by, Judy. I am woefully behind on posting my reviews, but I'm glad you've found a few that pique your interest. I would definitely recommend all three of those you pointed out.

21½. Composed, Rosanne Cash.

I have a strange sort of (one-way) relationship with the musical Cash family. The first album I ever bought with my own money was Johnny Cash's A Thing Called Love when I was 10 years old. The first concert I ever attended was a free concert in 1974 by Johnny Cash and the Carter Family, at the baseball stadium in Davenport, Iowa. The first album I ever checked out at the library was Rosanne Cash's Seven Year Ache in 1981. The first concert I ever reviewed professionally was Johnny Cash again, this time in 1987 at the Masonic Temple in Davenport. Four years later, the Man in Black was one of the first celebrities I ever interviewed in person.

So what I'm saying is that I'm a big fan of both Johnny and his supremely talented daughter, Rosanne. For that reason, I was eager to read Rosanne's memoir, Composed. I knew from listening to her songs that she is an intelligent, thoughtful writer, perhaps not the stereotype most people have of a country singer-songwriter. In that sense, Composed did not disappoint. Cash is candid without being indiscreet; you won't read any dirt about her first husband, singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell, or get the nitty-gritty on the collapse of their marriage. But while she is respectful of other people's privacy, she does not hesitate to share her own actions and reactions. In particular, the chapter where she chronicles all of the losses she experienced over the course of a year — her mother, her stepsister, her stepmother June Carter Cash, and of course her father — is a harrowing portrait of grief.

It's not surprising that a writer like Rosanne Cash would write such an emotionally open memoir, but Composed is also a first-rate look at her musical career and the stories behind each of her albums, and some of her most well-known songs. The combination added up to a fascinating portrait of an artist throughout her life.

Another Cash family fan here. I also think Rodney Crowell is one "hot" guy but I suspect he would be a difficult man to be married to. I watched an interview with him not that long ago and he told the funniest story about the first time Rosanne took him home to meet his future in-laws. I can only imagine how scary it would be to have Johnny Cash as your father-in-law!

It has been a while since I checked in here, Julia. Looks like you have been reading some terrific books!

Judy, I adore Rodney Crowell, too! I was so sad when he and Rosanne broke up, just because it seemed (from the outside, obviously) like a storybook pairing of country-music royalty. Coincidentally, he was interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air program earlier this year when his own memoir came out, Chinaberry Sidewalks. I haven't had a chance to read it, but it's in my wishlist.

Stasia, thanks for stopping by! I have been pretty pleased with my selections this year. A few clunkers, but most of them worth my time. I am SO behind on writing up my reviews, though. It's embarrassing!

Maybe just list the books and then come back with reviews as you have time? I never write the things so I am definitely not an expert on the subject.

Oh, a Rodney Crowell memoir, it's going on my wishlist right away!

26½. The False Friend, Myla Goldberg.

I first learned about the slipperiness of childhood memories when I was 14, and returned to visit the house I had grown up in until the age of 8. I was absolutely convinced that there were two apple trees in the backyard. When I closed my eyes I could see them, and see myself playing under them. But when I walked out the back door, there was just one apple tree. How could that possibly be? I mean, I could see that other tree!

Myla Goldberg's latest novel, The False Friend, deftly explores the chasm between childhood memory and reality. After a long absence through her adulthood, Celia returns to her small hometown to finally confess what really happened to her 10-year-old self's best friend: Djuna fell into a hole in the woods, but Celia lied and said she had gotten into a car with a stranger. Celia is shocked when no one — not a single person — believes her adult reality of that childhood memory. The reader follows along as Celia revisits people from her past, including the other three girls who were part of her friendship circle. She discovers that each person she talks to remembers a different Celia, by turns sweet, selfish and bullying. Can reality and memory ever come together to form truth?

I enjoyed Goldberg's previous novel, Bee Season, very much, and in many ways I enjoyed The False Friend just as much. Her characters are deftly drawn and she portrays the complicated relationships between people very effectively. The ending was a slight letdown, but overall The False Friend rang true to me.

27½. Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian.

Avi Steinberg is leading a pretty aimless life, writing obituaries for a newspaper, when he takes an abrupt detour and becomes a prison librarian. Throughout the first half of the book, Steinberg portrays himself as a real naïf about prison life. He is fascinated by the ways that inmates find of skirting the restrictions on their interpersonal communications, and he allows some of them, master manipulators who can sense his inexperience the way a dog senses fear, to con him into giving them more freedoms and privileges in the prison library than are permitted by the strict rules.

Steinberg nicely portrays his growing savvy as the book progresses, and an encounter with a former inmate out in the "real world" serves as a stark reminder that even the most charming, intelligent pimp is still a pimp. Overall, however, the book was entertaining without being compelling. A couple of long interruptions in my reading did not leave me clamoring to get back to it, although I did eventually.

#43: I will have to look for that one. Thanks for the recommendation, Julia!

I hope you enjoy it, Stasia!

Thanks! It looks as though my local library has it, so hopefully I can get to it soon.

29½. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson.

Here's how I rate Bill Bryson's books: One star for each embarrassing episode of inadvertent bursts of out-loud laughter in a public place. As you can see, I found The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid to be a thoroughly embarrassing read.

Bryson made his name as a travel humorist. (The first book of his that I read, Notes From a Small Island, also earned four snorts — I mean, stars.) That book documented his valedictory tour of Great Britain, where he had lived and worked as a journalist for a couple of decades, just before he brought his family back to his native United States. He also has documented his travels in Australia, the American Midwest, and a trek up the Appalachian Trail, all of which were reliably amusing if not entirely gut-busting. Along the way, Bryson also penned several books about the English language, Shakespeare, and the history of the modern house, bringing his trademark whimsy and fascination with the small details of history to each.

In The Thunderbolt Kid, Bryson looks back, chronicling his nearly idyllic childhood growing up in 1950s Des Moines, Iowa. Some of my friends find Bryson's humor to be occasionally mean-spirited, and it's true that he has a knack for skewering the least-attractive personality traits of some of the self-important blowhards he meets in his travels. Perhaps it's the softening effects of time, but there was relatively little savagery on display in Thunderbolt Kid. Oh, he still finds ways to point out the ridiculous aspects of some of his childhood nemeses, but the punches are pulled somewhat, leaving the reader with all of the humor and little of the discomfort.

I read a comment from another LibraryThing reader who speculated that only those who had grown up in 1950s America might appreciate The Thunderbolt Kid. I don't think that's true, necessarily; I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s but I still found much to enjoy in Bryson's memoir. I recommend this book to any fan of Bryson's or of coming-of-age stories, or anyone who enjoys having to apologize to the other riders on the city bus for bursting out in surprised guffaws while reading silently to oneself.

Glad you enjoyed this one by Bill Bryson. I haven't read Notes of a Small Island yet - will have to get to it soon.

Well, time to wrap up this sadly neglected thread — although I must point out in my defense that I was quite diligent about keeping the list of books read updated in Post 1. However, my good intentions to write short reviews of every book I read fell completely apart sometime in March, and I never recovered! I have higher hopes for 2012 ...

To wrap up 2011, I read quite a few really wonderful books. One of the very best was in January: Every Last One by Anna Quindlen. And one of them was at the very end of December: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Other notables through the year:

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks
Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Columbine by Dave Cullen
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

Thanks to Jim (drneutron) for letting me play in the 75ers sandbox, and thanks to everyone who either took the time to comment on my thread or engage in delightful conversation about books with me on others' threads. Onward to 2012!

Last night I made a list of a few books that I wanted to be sure to get around to reading in 2012. Mudbound was one of them. I've seen so many good comments about it.

Lori, I would enthusiastically recommend Mudbound. I had expected it to be a 2012 book, but I came up on the reserve list at the library earlier than I expected. It's deceptively short(ish) but it packs a wallop. I'll keep an eye on your 2012 thread to see what you think of it once you read it!