12 of 2011 – Part Two

I’ve pledged to read 12 books in 2011. I’ll read more, but I’m definitely going to read this 12 (one a month) this year. The first part of the list can be found here.

7. Ninteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult -

Best known for tackling controversial issues through richly told fictional accounts, Jodi Picoult’s 14th novel, Nineteen Minutes, deals with the truth and consequences of a smalltown high-school shooting. Set in Sterling, New Hampshire, Picoult offers reads a glimpse of what would cause a 17-year-old to wake up one day, load his backpack with four guns, and kill nine students and one teacher in the span of nineteen minutes. As with any Picoult novel, the answers are never black and white, and it is her exceptional ability to blur the lines between right and wrong that make this author such a captivating storyteller.

On Peter Houghton’s first day of kindergarten, he watched helplessly as an older boy ripped his lunch box out of his hands and threw it out the window. From that day on, his life was a series of humiliations, from having his pants pulled down in the cafeteria, to being called a freak at every turn. But can endless bullying justify murder? As Picoult attempts to answer this question, she shows us all sides of the equation, from the ruthless jock who loses his ability to speak after being shot in the head, to the mother who both blames and pities herself for producing what most would call a monster. Surrounding Peter’s story is that of Josie Cormier, a former friend whose acceptance into the popular crowd hangs on a string that makes it impossible for her to reconcile her beliefs with her actions.

At times, Nineteen Minutes can seem tediously stereotypical– jocks versus nerds, parent versus child, teacher versus student. Part of Picoult’s gift is showing us the subtleties of these common dynamics, and the startling effects they often have on the moral landscape.

Sophie has been trying to get me to read a Picoult book for awhile now. This one’s plot was the first to really interest me. If it makes me cry, I’m punching Sophie and Jodi in the face.

8. The Sookie Stackhouse books – My friend, Marge, very generously sent me the boxset of the first 8 or so Sookie Stackhouse books for my birthday last August. Since I’m a fan of the ridiculous show, True Blood, the books are based on, I’m really looking forward to diving in. Marge assures me that the book Sookie is not nearly as annoying as Anna Paquin’s portrayal.

9. The Confession by John Grisham –

In 2007, almost on the eve of the execution of Donté Drumm, an African-American college football star, for the 1998 murder of a white cheerleader whose body was never found, Travis Boyette, a creepy multiple sex offender, confesses that he’s guilty of the crime to Kansas minister Keith Schroeder. With Drumm’s legal options dwindling fast and with the threat of civil unrest in his Texas hometown if the execution proceeds, Schroeder battles to convince Boyette to go public with the truth–and to persuade the condemned man’s attorney that Boyette’s story needs to be taken seriously.

This, and my next selection, can be considered my super-fluff reads. They’re not particularly challenging, often predictable, very quick reads, but they’re fun.

10. Cross Fire by James Patterson – Just as Alex Cross is about to get married, a serial sniper fucks things up. See? Simple and fun.

11. The Dice Man by Luke Rinehart

I tried to find an adequate description of this very… different… story online and couldn’t. I first heard of this book in a blog post by my friend Zoe Brock a few years ago. It wasn’t available for purchase then, nor could I find it in the library. Another friend, Emily, recently reviewed it for her website and I was happy to see it’s available at Amazon.com. Here’s a bit of Emily’s review:

Dr. Lucius Rhinehart is bored. Bored with himself, his family, his psychological practice, with society and its ridiculous rules and constraints; BORED. His wife irritates him, his children are tedious, his patients never get any better. He’s stagnating in every sense of the term and is contemplating suicide. Coming to the conclusion that suicide isn’t an option, he decides that he is going to spice up his life by leaving some of his decisions to chance – that is, he assigns a certain number to each of several choices, rolls the dice, and does whatever the dice choose. No rolling again, no taking it back. Sounds like harmless fun, right? Unfortunately, Dr. Rhinehart’s black sense of humor gets the best of him and his first “decision” one evening is whether or not to go to bed with his wife, stay up reading, or go down the hall and rape Arlene, his attractive neighbor and wife of a colleague. Perhaps not surprisingly, the dice choose Arlene, and Luke dutifully trundles down the hall.

12. The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson –

An extraordinary debut novel of love that survives the fires of hell and transcends the boundaries of time.

The narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life. As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul.

A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love. He is released into Marianne’s care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.

This was tossed about as a possible selection for my book club, but something else was chosen. The description intrigued me and I promised myself that I’d eventually get around to it.

Nina’s Book Club – Vote for September’s Selection

Update: The winner is Fluke Or, I Know Why The Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore. I’ve already started. I’ll be posting the discussion blog for this book on September 30th at which time we’ll also choose October’s selection.

*****

I went through all of your selections and came up with a small list for us to vote on. Below you will find each title with a brief description to help with your vote. I tried to keep the selections “light” as (this month anyway) I’m not in the mood for anything too heavy with school just starting.

Please vote for one title only in the comments section below. Feel free to nominate a title for October by emailing it to nina@blogitoutb.com

This Charming Man by Marion Keyes -

Paddy de Courcy is Ireland’s debonair politician, the “John F. Kennedy Jr. of Dublin.” His charm and charisma have taken hold of the country and the tabloids, not to mention our four heroines: Lola, Grace, Marnie, and Alicia. But though Paddy’s winning smile is fooling Irish minds, the broken hearts he’s left in his past offer a far more truthful look into his character.

Narrated in turn by each woman, This Charming Man explores how their love for this one man has shaped their lives. But in true Marian Keyes fashion, this is more than a story of four love affairs. It’s a testament to the strength women find in themselves through work, friendship, and family, no matter what demons may be haunting their lives. Depression, self-doubt, domestic abuse—each of these women has seen tough times in life, and it’s through Keyes’s wonderful storytelling ability that these subjects are approached with the appropriate tone and candor. Her deft touch provides a gripping story and, ultimately, a redemptive ending.

Almost Moon – Alice Sebold

A woman steps over the line into the unthinkable in this brilliant, powerful, and unforgettable new novel by the author of The Lovely Bones and Lucky.

For years Helen Knightly has given her life to others: to her haunted mother, to her enigmatic father, to her husband and now grown children. When she finally crosses a terrible boundary, her life comes rushing in at her in a way she never could have imagined. Unfolding over the next twenty-four hours, this searing, fast-paced novel explores the complex ties between mothers and daughters, wives and lovers, the meaning of devotion, and the line between love and hate. It is a challenging, moving, gripping story, written with the fluidity and strength of voice that only Alice Sebold can bring to the page.

The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson

At the start of Davidson’s powerful debut, the unnamed narrator, a coke-addled pornographer, drives his car off a mountain road in a part of the country that’s never specified. During his painful recovery from horrific burns suffered in the crash, the narrator plots to end his life after his release from the hospital. When a schizophrenic fellow patient, Marianne Engel, begins to visit him and describe her memories of their love affair in medieval Germany, the narrator is at first skeptical, but grows less so. Eventually, he abandons his elaborate suicide plan and envisions a life with Engel, a sculptress specializing in gargoyles. Davidson, in addition to making his flawed protagonist fully sympathetic, blends convincing historical detail with deeply felt emotion in both Engel’s recollections of her past life with the narrator and her moving accounts of tragic love. Once launched into this intense tale of unconventional romance, few readers will want to put it down.

Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings – Christopher Moore

In his entertaining adventure-in-whale-researching, Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings, Nathan Quinn, a prominent marine biologist, has been conducting studies in Hawaii for years trying to unravel the secret of why humpback whales sing. During a typical day of data gathering, Nate believes his mind is failing: the subject whale has “Bite Me” scrawled across its tail. Events become even stranger as the self-proclaimed “action nerds,” Nate, photographer Clay, their research assistant Amy, and Kona, a white Rasta (a Jewish kid from New Jersey), encounter sabotage to their data and equipment. They also observe increasingly bizarre whale behavior, including a phone call from the whale to their wealthy sponsor to ask that Nate bring it a hot pastrami and Swiss on rye, and discover both a thriving underwater city and the secret to what happened to Amelia Earhart. Thoughtful, irreverent, and often hilarious, Moore has crafted a tale that contains a bit of the saga of declining whale populations due to hunting and habitat destruction, as well as his over-the-top, decadent wit as applied to scientific methodology and professional jealousies. Moore notes a pasty, rival scientist “looked like Death out for his after-dinner stroll before a busy night of e-mailing heart attacks and tumors to a few million lucky winners,” and that killer whales (which are all named Kevin), are “just four tons of doofus dressed up like a police car.” Smart, sincere, and a whale of a story, Fluke is terrific.

Fluke  gets my vote because I am reading Christopher Moore’s, “A Dirty Job” and it is hilarious! I could go for another dose of his humor.