The Road

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Category: Fiction Grade: C

What a huge disappointment! After reading some of McCarthy's past work, especially All the Pretty Horses or No Country For Old Men, I really think he's one of the best novelists alive. He writes stark, graphic, often violent novels. They're difficult to read. He has lots of quirks, almost literary tics, like never using apostrophes, but his books carry through all this.

Not this one. The Road is the story of a father and son - never named - in a post-apocalyptic world. All the plants, animals and most humans are dead. The pair is walking south. Basically, that's it. Nothing particularly interesting happens. There are no flights of beautiful prose. The story is bleak and we repeatedly get scintillating conversations between the duo like "You OK?" - "Sure" - "OK" - "OK". Over and over.

Skip this one and go pick up something like Blood Meridian or one of the ones mentioned above to see what this incredible writer can do on a good day.

Pillar of Fire

Pillar of Fire, America in the King Years 1963-65
By Taylor Branch

Category: History Grade: A-

This is the second volume in Branch's history of the civil rights movement that focuses on Martin Luther King. As you might remember the first volume was my non-fiction "book-of-the-summer" a few months ago. While the second volume isn't quite as good as the first, its still a terrific read. In the first volume, frankly, there weren't a lot of things of interest going on in the United States during the period covered. That let Branch really focus on the civil rights movement and move at a fairly leisurely pace through the 900 page book. He's got two things working against him in the second volume -- first, his editor obviously balked at a second book the same length so this book is "only" about 600 pages long. Second, the 3 year period he's writing about is jam packed with events both inside the civil rights movement and out. These were the years of the Kennedy administration and the assassination; Johnson's push for both civil rights and voting rights legislation and, of course, the creep in to the Vietnam War. Inside the civil rights movement, there are major developments all over - Selma, St Augustine, Birmingham, the death of Medgar Evers and so on. This leads to a much more frenetic pace for this book. Branch frequently switches topics from page to page and, occasionally from paragraph to paragraph. Its harder to keep up, but worth it.

There are three dominating themes that carry through the whole book. The scary one, as always in reading about this period, is the overwhelming control that J Edgar Hoover had over the country, including its leaders. Unbeknownst to anybody except Bobby Kennedy and a few other Justice Department people, Hoover bugged King and his entourage constantly and engaged in a pretty intense effort to discredit King. I guess with this week's groundbreaking for the new MLK memorial on the Washington mall, we know who history gives the win to, but at the time, it was in serious doubt.

The second big theme is the internal warfare within the black community. The battles with the most impact were between the various "mainstream" civil rights groups - NAACP, SNCC, SCLC. Differences in attitudes and power struggles had a major impact on what got done and how. The tiptoeing that King did to keep to keep his second in command, Ralph Abernathy, happy was amazing. But, of course, the most interesting warfare was within the Black Muslim community - essentially, the story of Malcolm X. This book ends with his assassination and leaves you wondering what would have been different if the growing relationship between Malcolm and the mainstream community hadn't been cut short.

The final theme, and maybe the most interesting, is the constant battle between politics and morality reflected by both the state/federal battle and the inside looks at the White House. As you probably know if you've read a lot about the two of them, everything indicates that Kennedy was the hardcore politician while Johnson pursued the moral goals (other than Vietnam) out of conviction, rather than politics. Just backwards from the uninformed conventional wisdom.

Even though it wasn't quite as good as the first volume, it still has me anxious to start the third. Any writer that can keep you interested in a single subject through some 2000+ pages definitely has something going.

Seriff Foundation Featured!

Folks -- a diversion from the usual book reviews. Take a look at the web site www.c-s-f.org. This is the Conference of Southwest Foundations and, each month, they feature one of their member foundations on their home page. This month its us! If you click on, the foundation name to the right of the logo, it'll bring up a description of what we've been up to for the last 5 or 6 years.

Nice to be recognized.

Artemis Fowl, The Lost Colony

Artemis Fowl, The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer

Category: Kid-lit Grade: A

So, what makes kid-lit kid-lit? When I was growing up, we boys read the Hardy Boys and girls read Nancy Drew and everybody read the Bobsey Twins. The books were short. They had big print. They had simple plots with "smack-you-between-the-eyes" morals. Everybody assumed that, to keep teens interested, these were the rules you had to follow. This situation was slowly changing over the couple of decades. Authors like C.S. Lewis (Narnia), Phillip Pullman (Golden Compass) and even, to some extent, Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) were writing stories that were intelligent, well written with complex plots. They were about the same length as adult novels. Then in the 90s, Harry Potter changed all the rules for popular teen (even pre-teen) and young adult books. All of a sudden, it was OK if a big was long, complicated with fully fleshed out characters - kids, and many adults, would stand in line to buy a good book. About the only thing that all of the so-called kid-lit books have in common is that the primary characters were kids - i.e. somebody kids could relate to. But these were such interesting kids that the books appealed to a wide audience.

The Artemis Fowl series took advantage of this new world with a series about a teenage (actually younger in the first book) genius who starts out as one of the world 11 year old master criminals. In the middle of one of his capers, he discovers the long hidden underground world the fairies -- gnomes, pixies, demons, imps - a great big cast of characters. Through the books, we watch Artemis get a little older and develop an interesting moral sense.

The Lost Colony is the fifth book in the series. Artemis is 14 and - surprise, surprise - has hit puberty and discovered girls. The girl another child genius is about where Artemis was 4 books ago -- 11 and brilliant, manipulating all the adults around her. When they both end up working on the same fairy-world issue, for opposite reasons, they make a connection that jumps all over the map.

This is not serious fiction like Tolkien or, to be honest, not even like Rowlins. Its light, funny, well-written and full of action. Its just a plain entertaining read. I highly recommend it to any of you who have any tolerance for fantasy and, of course, to any of you who have any control over the reading lists of a kid-lit target. If you seriously want to give this series a try, I'd suggest you pick up the first book. A lot of the in jokes won't make sense if you don't read the books in order.

Reading Like a Writer

Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

Category: Literary Criticism Grade: A-

Prose is a prolific writer, having written a couple of dozen books - fiction, non-fiction and children's books. I have to be honest and say that I'd never really heard of her or read any of work. That'll probably change. I saw of review of this one and decided to give it a try. What I found is well-written and very interesting description of how books are put together. The book is dead-on with its sub-title -- "A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want to Write Them".

In addition to her writing, the author has spent a lot of time in the classroom teaching literature and conducting writing workshops. She's a proponent of "close reading" - basically a belief that you should pay attention to what you're reading in deep details - e.g. that the words are as important as the concept. Normally, I'm put of by this style of reading. If you've followed this blog, you know that I love to read. To me, books are entertaining, informative, distracting, immersive and so on. A good book should make you feel like you're reading a good book - that simple. Too often, especially in school, we're taught that its important to understand a book than to enjoy it. This tends to lead to children, and eventually adults, who never pick up a book for pleasure.

Well, Prose manages to turn that belief on its ear a little bit. The chapter headings give you an idea of what you're in for -- Words, Sentences, Paragraphs, Narration, Character, Dialogue, Gesture and wrapping up with Learning from Chekhov. What should really be pretty dull, turns out to grab you almost from the beginning and, just as she predicted, turns you in to a better reader. While you don't lose the ability to feel the power or beauty of a book, Prose gives you the tools to understand why. It doesn't hurt that her own writing style is excellent - I'll be looking for some of her fiction next time I'm in a book store.

Prose provides lots of examples from all kinds of sources that illustrate her points. She ranges all over the map from Chekhov and Tolstoy to Raymond Chandler. At the end of the book, she has a list of "Books to Be Read Immediately". To be honest, its not likely that I'll start working my way through her list. Its also not likely that I'll give up reading entertaining hacks like Dean Koontz. Thanks to Prose, however, I'll least be able to tell the difference between hacks and authors.

Catching up

Since we've gotten back to Texas, as you might guess, its been really, really hectic. I haven't stopped reading, but I'm getting farther and farther behind on posted reviews. If there had been a really killer book, I'd have found the time, but the last three were decent, but not great. Here's an update:

Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen
Category: Fiction Grade: B+

A fairly short novel by the Newsweek columnist, Anna Quindlen. I always read her books because she's definitely got a way with putting things together. This is necessary because most of her books are borderline "chick-lit". This one is no exception. Its the story of the Fitzmaurice sisters -- Meghan is the glamour sister pretty much patterned after Katie Couric, while Bridget is the kind of frumpy social worker sister. The stories follows the complete dissolution of Meghan's life after a particularly bad on air faux-pas. The story is engaging, but not too taxing -- great for a beach or vacation read. Quindlen has a very spare writing style - she never takes a paragraph to say what a few words will say perfectly well. You just feel comfortable reading her work.


The Devil's Doctor by Philip Ball
Category: Science history Grade: B

This was actually pretty good I've got no clue who to recommend it to. Its a historical biography of a guy named Paracelsus - somebody I'd never heard of before. He was a 15th century "doctor". What makes the book interesting is that this was era when it was hard to spot the borderlines between doctors, scientists, alchemists and magicians. Ball's premise is essentially that Paracelsus was one of the transition folks who deeply believed in alchemy but also saw the body as a "small world" where chemical alchemy could be used to treat all kinds of diseases. He was really one of the inventors of modern medicine although he never quite separated his work from his religious beliefs. The upheaval of the times was not only scientific -- with Paracelsus, Newton, Galileo, etc. It was also the days of Martin Luther and the Reformation. The Devil's Doctor is a fairly long book that follows the subject's travels all over Europe as he's kicked out of city after city for his beliefs and practices. Almost nobody is going to like this book - Dan, Steve, Ted - not sure who else, so unless you're really in to history, science or medicine (preferably, all three), skip this one.

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
Category: Fiction Grade: C+

It's really a shame about this one. Haddon's first novel was the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, a strange name for a novel told from the perspective of an autistic child. That one was terrific and showed a lot of promise. When I heard that he had a new one, I headed straight out to get it and moved it to the top of the pile. It wasn't completely awful but it was a major disappointment. His writing skills are still there but, this time, he takes on the story of an English family. I know its chauvinistic but with all the British phrasing and slang that I don't know about, everything felt just a little off the whole way.

The story is about a family that is in the process of falling apart -- husband losing his mind, wife having an affair, daughter getting married to someone the family doesn't approve of and son who can't decide whether to make a commitment to his gay lover. While things happen in the book, it never really feels like anything is happening. If it hadn't been for Haddon's first book, I'd have probably laid this one down. I still highly recommend that one, but this one you can skip.

Octavian Nothing

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson

Category: Young Adult Fiction Grade: C+

This is an interesting one. Ultimately not very good, but interesting. First, I found it in the teen/young adult section of the book store where I tend to shop for good fantasy. This sounded like a serious, but different, fantasy. The opening premise is that the lead character, Octavian, and his mother live a pampered life in the "Novanglian College of Lucidity". They're the only occupants who have names; everyone else is known by their number. Octavian spends his days being classically educated and his evenings entertaining guests with his beautiful mother. Great start - now what?

(Spoiler alert -- since I'm not particularly recommending this book, I'm giving away the plot below so if there's any chance you'll read it, just go read it.)

As the story develops, it becomes more real-world as it tries to teach lessons about slavery and capitalism. As it turns out, Octavian is a slave living a pre-revolutionary Massachusetts. He is the subject of an experiment to determine if a classically educated black can reach the same levels of "intellectual sophistication" as similarly educated white children. About half-way through the book, the college's patron dies and his family brings in "investors" who want to change the experiments to produce products and answers that will serve them economically. With a very heavy hand, the author then proceeds to show that, capitalism screws up everything. The experiment with Octavian changes in to "let's prove a black can't be educated". The head moneyman comes in a makes a pass at Octavian's mother. When she refuses, she and Octavian are basically turned back in to house-slaves. At this point, the author gets to show the brutality of slavery and the hypocrisy of the revolution against England while maintaining slavery.

The book is also written in the languages styles of the 18th century and about of a third of it is told in the form of letters home from soliders - both things I don't really like in a book. It's also the first volume of a pair of books but I probably won't bother with the next one.

The General & The Jaguar

The General & The Jaguar by Eileen Welsome

Category: History Grade: D

I tried - I really tried. This book about Pancho Villa and the tail end of the Mexican Revolution should have been good. Its a really interesting period of history. Villa is one of the those larger than life figures that everybody knows but nobody really knows much about. To some, he was a Mexican hero, but his vanity, gratuitous murder and destruction leads to a different opinion. So when I saw a book about Villa and about Pershing's hunt for him, written but a former Pulizter Prize winner, I jumped at it.

Well, I lasted about 125 pages. This book is so filled with totally meaningless details that it gets boring. The writer is trying hard to be "literary", but her prose comes across as just plain silly. I'll give you one example and then not waste any more of your time. Apparently, then night that Villa decided to cross the border and attack an American city (Columbus, NM), the weather was dry. Instead of just saying "it wasn't raining", Welsome says "No mediating layer of moisture existed between the troops and the night sky...". I mean, come on!

Enough said.

The Known World

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Category: Novel Grade: B+

This book was really popular about a year, even winning a Pulitzer Prize. I avoided it since its about one of the subjects that I usually avoid reading about - slavery. Typically, books about slavery take the approach of rubbing the readers nose in the horrors. They're usually full of floggings, lynchings and the like and, frankly, the gruesome isn't necessary to prove that slavery was a terrible institution. Consequently, first time around, I skipped this book.

Jones has recently published a book of short stories that continue the stories of some of the people in The Known World and, because of that, has been back in the news and the book review journals. As before, the book is a little controversial, but there are reputable reviewers out there who are calling this one of the best novels of the last couple of decades. So I finally gave in and picked the book up.

First, let me warn that this is not an easy book to read. Jones definitely plays fast and loose with both time and place producing a decidedly non-linear book. He's constantly doing brief asides -- he'll be talking about some character and flash forward fifty years to the circumstances of that person's death. Sometimes, he'll introduce a flashback that'll last fifteen or twenty pages. He's telling the stories of dozens of people and, at times, it can be hard to figure out who and when he's talking about.

That said, this is a pretty powerful book. The plot vehicle he uses is to tell the story of a family of free blacks in the South who went on to own a dozen or so slaves of their own. This incongruity of blacks owning blacks is the centerpiece that lets him tell, in some ways, a very mundane story about the lives of slaves and the rigid rules that divide slaves from masters, even when they're both the same race. Surprisingly, the fact that there aren't a lot of histrionics emphasize the moral repugnance of slavery. Jones definitely shows that "gruesome" doesn't have to involve blood and violence -- its just as apparent in the everybody life of a slave.

OK - that sounded really preachy, but, while a difficult read, this book was pretty good. Good enough that, even though I tend not to read about slavery or read short stories, I'll definitely pick up Jones's followup.

Summing up the Summer List

Well, summer in Colorado is over so the, while I'm going to keep posting reviews, the pace will definitely slow down since things are a little busier in Texas than, saw, nothing in Colorado! I thought I'd take a minute a highlight the books that I'd recommend the most from the summer reading.

And the winner is.....

Two books over the summer got A+ ratings - one fiction, one nonfiction. Both will require a little commitment - the fiction because its weird; the nonfiction because its long - but you'll definitely be rewarded with these two amazing books. The best fiction book of the summer, hands down, was The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. Winning with just as much ease on the non-fiction side - Taylor Branch's extraordinary first volume of his "America in the King Years" series, Parting the Waters.

Other books that I definitely recommend:

Kingfish - excellent bio of Huey Long. Read it before you go see "All the King's Men" this fall.

Sound and Fury - surprisingly heart-grabbing double bio of Muhammed Ali and Howard Cosell

A Dirty Job - funniest book of the year

The Rabbit Factory - great first mystery novel (and the author actually posted to the blog!)

The Stolen Child - good fantasy novel for non-fantasy readers

Finally, there's gotta be some really good trash on the list of recommendations! Try Kellerman's Gone or Koontz's The Husband.

Enjoy!

The Art of Deception

The Art of Deception by Laurie R. King

Category: Mystery Grade: C+

With a couple of exceptions, all of Laurie King's fall in to one of two series. The one I read her for is the "Mary Russell" series in which Russell is a young women who, late in his life (around 1900), marries Sherlock Holmes and solves crimes with him. These are really terrific books. The other King series, which I usually don't read, is the Kate Martinelli series -- a current-day San Francisco cop. The Art of Deception, a Martinelli book, caught my eye because the center of the mystery is a supposedly recently discovered Arthur Conan Doyle manuscript that seems to be a lost Sherlock Holmes story. The murdered man and most of the suspects are part of a dinner group of Sherlock fanatics.

I should have stuck to my instincts on King books. Mirroring her overall writing, this is really two books in one since, as Martinelli reads the lost Holmes story, we get to read it too. While the Holmes story is actually pretty good, there's not enough to it to save what is, otherwise, a pretty standard police procedural novel. Like most series books, there's a fair amount about Martinelli's personal life but its not particularly interesting. The murder isn't very interesting, the search for the murder isn't very interesting and the book's ending is especially weak.

While I highly recommend most of King's "Mary Russell" books, there are definitely far more interesting detective novels out there. Skip this one.

Black Maestro

Black Maestro by Joe Drape
The Epic Life of an American Legend

Category: Biography Grade: B+

Its pretty rare that I'll experiment with a biography of somebody I've never heard up, but this book was a birthday present so I decided to give it a try. Well worthwhile. The subject of this book is Jimmy Winkfield, a black jockey who was born in the early 1880s. His story turns out to be pretty amazing, helped along by the Drape's lyrical writing style.

Born in Kentucky, Winkfield spent his childhood hanging around the horse farms of the Bluegrass. As a boy, he learned by watching and loved everything about horses - grooming, training, exercising but most of all racing. He became one of the most accomplished American jockeys of the late 19th century, winning the Kentucky Derby two years in a row. However, these were also the years that Jim Crow laws were becoming entrenched across the United States and, slowly, black jockeys disappeared from the scene - sometimes driven out by rough treatment on the track by other jockeys and sometimes just denied rides by owners. This changing American landscape sent Winkfield off on an amazing world tour that lasted decades.

Settling for years in Russia where being black wasn't a handicap (especially since he was usually the only one around), Winkfield became the leading Russian jockey working for the son of an Armenian oil man who was determined to make Russia a powerhouse. At the peak of his productive years, he got caught up in the Russian Revolution and was part of a group that led hundreds of Russian thoroughbreds on a months long trip across Europe to France. He left his White Russian wife and their son behind with eventual tragic consequences. Eventually, the Nazis drove Winkfield back to the United States where he lived out his life.

This is a well written, entertaining book that anybody who likes sports or history will enjoy.

Last Dance

Last Dance by John Feinstein
Behind the Scenes at the Final Four

Category: Sports Grade: B+

I said it earlier this summer and I'll say it again -- John Feinstein is the best sports writer out there today. His books, like this one, are consistently well written, interesting and, especially for the sports fan, show terrific insight in to the games he covers.

This one, as the subtitle implies, is about what I think is probably the best sports event of the year -- the NCAA basketball Final Four. Although its still terrific, this isn't one of Feinstein's best books, mainly because he abandons his normal modus operandi. Usually, he signs for in depth coverage of a specific team or group of teams for a long period of time - usually a full season. For example, in his most recent book, Next Man Up, he spent a full season with the Baltimore Ravens. For what I think is his best book, The Last Amateurs, he spent a complete year with the basketball teams of the Patriot League - one of the last group of teams that didn't offer athletic scholarship. This lets him get in deep for close looks at the players and coaches involved. There's a lot of talk about basketball and football games, but the game is mostly about characters that you actually get to know.

In Last Dance, Feinstein uses the Final Four as a framework to talk about some of the great figures of the game - coaches like Krzyzewski, Smith and Williams; some of the stellar players that competed in the Final Four - both stars and end-of-the-benchers. He also gives us vignettes about refs, reporters and even administrators. He doesn't even talk much about the actual Final Four games until over half way through the book. Unfortunately, Final Four week isn't enough glue to hold the stories together so want you get the book is essentially a series of loosely related essays. A bad side affect of this is that there are lot of stories that get repeated two, three and even four times in different parts of the book.

There's still good stuff here and any serious basketball fan should really enjoy the book. If you try and like it, definitely move on to some of Feinstein's better work.

Kingfish

Kingfish, The Reign of Huey P. Long by Richard D. White, Jr.

Category: Biography Grade: A

I bought this book a couple of months ago but, coincidentally, the Denver Post did a mini-review of the book yesterday. There comment -- you can never go wrong reading about Huey Long. Definitely true. I've read other books about him plus, of course, the novel All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren whose main character is a thinly disguised Kingfish. The novel was made in to a great movie decades ago with Broderick Crawford and has been remade for release this fall starring Sean Penn. Really looking forward to that one.

Long portrayed himself as a populist - looking out for the little guy. He became governor of Louisiana by constantly attacking the entrenched political machines and the wealthy people and corporations (especially Standard Oil) that kept Louisiana pretty backwards. In his early days as governor, he actually kept many of his promises and did amazing things for the state -- free textbooks for students for the first time, paving thousands of miles of roads, turning LSU from nothing to a major university, getting rid of the poll tax. While doing this, however, Long turned himself in to pretty much the absolute dictator of the state. He was colorful, controlling, a political genius and as vindictive as they come. He and his cronies also robbed the state blind and, to pay for everything he did - both for the state and for himself - raised taxes by 75% and raised state debt by 1500%!

At the peak of his power, Long himself had actually moved on to the U.S. Senate but, through a puppet governor whose election he arranged, he still maintained a tight control over the state. It was common for Long to come in to Baton Rouge, call a special session and have 30 or 40 bills that he wrote himself passed by the legislature in a few hours. After his first few years in power, he did relatively little for the state. Most of the bills passed were either designed to punish his opponents (e.g. by making their businesses illegal) or increasing his control (e.g. by turning the hiring and firing of all teachers, policemen and municipal works into state employees). When crossed by city politicians, his reaction could be drastic. In Baton Rouge, he had martial law declared. In New Orleans, he sent in the state militia to ensure that the mayor was powerless.

While, after his first few years of acquiring power, Long did relatively little for the state or the "little guy", his popularity continued to soar. He became a violent enemy of FDR and began to become well known nationally. His populist proposals, made through his national organizations, Share Our Wealth, never made much sense but sounded incredible to a nation still in recovery from the great depression. For example, one of his cornerstones was to, via taxation, confiscate all wealth over a million dollars and, in return, guarantee everyone an annual income of $4000. Of course, the numbers didn't work - he actually would have add to confiscate all income over $4000 in order to guarantee an income to everyone of $1400! However, the struggling poor in the country weren't economists and Huey's way sounded like the answer. At its peak, Share Our Wealth had a membership of over 8 million people.

Huey was assassinated at the age of 42. At that point his fellow Senators despised him and FDR was the FBI and the IRS (actually its predecessor) to try to bring the Kingfish down. Its interest to speculate what would have happened had Long lived. He had already announced his candidacy for President at his death. While he knew he couldn't win in 1936, he had growing confidence that he could pull enough votes away from FDR to put Hoover back in the White House. He assumed that Hoover, as he did the first time around, would screw up and that Huey would then become the front runner in 1940. This scenario could easily have given the United States a dictator, rather than a President, at the worst possible time.

White has a great writing style. He supplies plenty of detail without ever getting lost in them. He's great a quick-stroke characters - and there are lots of them. This is a book that both history and political buffs will enjoy. Especially if you've never read anything about the Kingfish, pick this one up.

Small Steps

Small Steps by Louis Sachar

Category: Teen Fiction Grade: B+

OK, so its a kids book. Sachar's well known book (and more recently a movie) is called and it was actually pretty good and this one takes place in Austin (Sachar is an Austinite), so I decided to give this one a try. It isn't really a sequel to Holes, but it does feature a couple of the kids from that book - Armpit and X-Ray. There's nothing really fancy about this story - it deals with ticket scalping and a very sheltered rock star. It only took about 3 hours to read and that was because I was watching a basketball game at the same time.

All in all, it was a decent story and good writing. It's aimed at teens so there's nothing fancy about it, but I enjoyed it.

The book is only about 200 pages long with big print. Since I don't want the review to be longer than the book, I'll quit now.

The Devil is a Gentleman

The Devil is a Gentleman by J.C. Hallman
Exploring America's Religious Fringe

Category: Religious History Grade: D

Laid it down after reading about a couple of UFO groups and an American Druid group. Just boring.

Labyrinth

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

Category: Historical Fiction Grade: B

Not surprisingly, there's been a string of books like Labyrinth in the last couple of years. With the success of The Da Vinci Code, lots of authors are trotting out fiction that deals with more alternative definitions of the Holy Grail - what it is, what happened to it, how it might affect today's world. Mosse has kind of written a feminist interpretation here with women playing the key rolls - both good and evil.

What makes this one interesting is that Mosse actually tells the dual story with part happening today and the other part happening in the 13th century. Fortunately, the majority of the book takes place in France in the 13th century since the book is so-so whenever it turns to the modern characters and much more interesting when it stays in the ancient world. The period of time Mosse deals with is the fairly unknown European Crusades. During this period of time, the Catholic world mounted a Crusade, not against the Muslim world of the Holy Land, but against the heretical (e.g. the emerging Protestant) world of Southern France. As with many religious wars, this Crusade was 10% about religion and 90% about land, money and power.

The primary story features Alais, the daughter of the advisor to one of the rulers of Southern France and the husband of a chevalier, essentially a knight, in the same court. What Alais learns over the course of the book is that her father is part of an ancient order designed to protect the Grail (sound familiar?). When her father dies during a siege, she picks up his responsibilities. The second story, taking place in 2005, features Alice (get it?) a woman who accidentally (or is it?) discovers the ancient cave that is the.... well, I won't give it away.

Even though the book teeters precariously on the edge of being a "bodice ripper" at times and a romance novel at other times, its still a decent read as long as Mosse is dealing with history. Whenever she jumps to the modern era, the book gets more exciting, but a little silly.

Phil -- this is probably one that Katherine would like.

Sweet and Low

Sweet and Low by Rich Cohen

Category: Family memoir Grade: C+

I'll never say anything bad about my family again (not, of course, that I would ever say anything bad about my family!). This book is the story of the Eisenstadt family - the family that founded and still owns Cumberland Packaging - the makers of Sweet and Low. The story is told by the grandson of the founders, Rich Cohen. He's part of the branch of the family that ended up getting disinherited so he's got a bit of a bone to pick. This is one screwed up family. Starting with the patriarch, Ben - his first big brainstorm was mucking with a tea bagging machine to create the first sugar packets. He did this so he wouldn't have to clean the sugar containers on the tables in his diner. Ben took it to Domino Sugar without bothering to file a patent and, predictably, Domino stole his idea. Years later, as the diet craze struck, he launched the Sweet and Low brand and built a mega-business. The rest of the family was equally nuts. Ben's son Marvin (known as Uncle Marvelous) took over the business, but also hired a couple of mob-connected senior execs (e.g. a CFO who's previous experience was as a mechanic) who proceeded to rob the company blind and, eventually, get Marvin indicted. There's sister Gladys who, one day, wasn't feeling well and went to her room -- for 30 years!

Unfortunately, as interesting as the story is, there are two flaws that keep the book from being as good as the story. First and foremost, Cohen really isn't that great a writer. He's not "put-it-down" terrible, but his writing frequently gets in the way of storytelling. This shouldn't have surprised me. I read two of his previous books -- Tough Jews (about Jewish gangsters) and The Avengers (about, I think, Israeli spies). Interesting stories -- mediocre writing.

His second flaw is that he keeps heading off on to tangents - most especially his long digression in to the history of sugar. The family was enough of a story and he should have stuck to that.

This book was (again, especially the story) good enough that I'll probably pick up his next book, but not good enough that I can recommend it to anybody.

A Dirty Job

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

Category: Fiction Grade: A

Moore is probably one of those authors that you've never heard of unless you've heard of him. I stumbled across one of his books years ago -- a book called The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove. Its just what it sounds like - the story of a prehistoric beast that crawls out of the ocean in the village of Melancholy Cove and makes everybody around, well, horny. Very few books make me laugh out loud but this one did and I was hooked. Just the titles of Moore's books can be hysterical - Island of the Sequined Love Nun - and, of course, the one before this one -- Lamb, the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. Moore is the most consistently funny writer out there. If you read his stuff on the bus, people will stare!

His latest, A Dirty Job, is the story of Charlie Asher. His young adored wife dies in childhood and when Death (well, actually small "d" death since there are lots of them) comes in to collect her soul, Charlie sees him. He's hard to miss since he's a seven foot tall black guy dressed completely in mint green, but a "death" at work is supposed to be invisible to everybody. The upshot is that Charlie has been chosen somehow to become one of the "deaths". His job is to collect the souls of the recently departed and recycle them to some other person in need of a soul. Hmmm -- doesn't sound very funny, but you gotta trust me, it is.

The plot revolves around the fact that, if any of the "deaths" screw up, the forces of the Dark Underworld get stronger and, eventually will come back above and take over the world. Needless to say, there are some great battles with the underworld characters, especially the "sewer harpies" - not your Steven King kind of battles - much more entertaining. While taking care of his job, Charlie also to continue to run his second store, deal with his employees - a teenage Goth and an ex-cop looking for love on the Internet, raise his daughter Sophie and her pets the giant hellhounds.

Most comic novels have this problem - they're impossible to explain in a way that gets the humor across. But this one - for that matter any of Moore's books - defy explanations and keep you laughing.

Five Families

Five Families by Selwyn Raab
The Rise, Decline and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires

Category: Crime History Grade: B

No, I haven't forgotten about you guys. This latest book was a big project, clocking it at over 700 pages. Its well written and not terribly heavy reading - just really long. The subtitle really says it all. Raab, a long time crime reporter for the New York Times, has written a definitive history of the New York City branches of the Mafia. He traces back to the 19th century origins in Sicily up to pretty much the present day. Bottom line - the real stories are far more interesting, if not quite as romantic, as anything in The Godfather trilogy. And Tony Soprano is just a wimp!

Throughout the book, you are repeatedly struck by two overall impressions. First, the casual brutality, while not surprising if you've read anything about these guys, is astounding. He sang to the cops -- kill him. He got too ambitious -- kill him. He wasn't turning over enough cash to the boss - kill him. He insulted somebody - kill him. He touched the wrong guys daughter -- kill him. Just not a lot of job security in this organization.

The second thing, however, is that some of the guys were really, really smart - especially before the 1980s. Probably the most impressive gangster of the bunch was Lucky Luciano. Before him, these were basically Italian immigrant street gangs. They were making money, but they were also feuding with each other costing not only money, but lives. In addition, every war would turn up the police heat a little bit. It was Luciano's concept to divide the pie up on the theory that was plenty for everybody. In the now familiar story, everybody would be divided up in to families (five in New York, with one each in other major cities). The families would be divided in to groups of roughly ten "made guys" - run by a "capo" and supported by dozens of support troops, most of whom would never move up the ladder. Luciano's major innovation was the creation of the "commission" to settle disputes between families on territories, division of profits, creation of new "made guys" and, of course, to have approval over hits, or murders. While everybody could profit, nobody had any connection to crimes that they weren't directly involved in providing, for decades, immunity for prosecution - especially for the bosses - the higher ups who never got their hands dirty.

Raab also talks a lot about the other side of the Mafia battles. From Hoover's denial that the Mafia exists until forced to acknowledge it by the Kennedy brothers to Rudy Guliani who was one of the first successful prosecutors using new legal tools like the RICO statutes. The story of RICO (an acronym created backwards - the author wanted the law to carry the name of Edward G. Robinson's character in Little Caesar) is really pretty interesting. It was handcrafted to go after "criminal enterprises" like the Mafia by introducing laws that allowed cops to go after the leaders of the families by tying them to the benefits and oversight of crimes not just the commission of them. However, the law was actually on the books for over a decade, unused, before a couple of FBI agents went to a seminar given by the law professor who drafted it while an attorney for a senate committee. In the 80s and 90s, RICO became the primary tool for largely dismantling the entire crime infrastructure. By strengthening the reach and length of the penalties, RICO encouraged a lot of mobsters to switch sides. In those decades, a lot of the cases - John Gotti, Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, "Chin" Gigante - were front page news.

Raab's book is a long trek so you really need have at least some interest in organized crime stories. If you don't, you'll probably be bored by page 70, much less page 700. For the few of you who do have an interest, this is probably the best single source of info I've seen on this subject.