Whine & Cheese

The Last Brother

Still kind of reeling from the length of 1Q84, I was still looking for something to read that was on the shorter side and I was still interested in filling out the brackets from the Tournament of Books (ToB). 

While it coincidentally ended up being the shortest book on the list (165 pages)... and in a first-round match-up vs. the longest book (you guessed it, 1Q84)... I was more intrigued with the premise of The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah.  One of the nice/cool/great things about the ToB is discovering books like this as this was one I had never heard of.

That said, this did not end up being my favorite or the best book I've read recently and it is one of those books, based on the subject matter alone, you come out feeling like a bit of a hard-ass for leveling any type of negative criticism. That is not to say that I was not moved by this novel.  Unless your heart is made of stone, that is pretty much an impossibility as the title character Raj, in what appears to be his waning days, reflects back on a memorable and traumatic summer when he was 10 years old.

Raj's story alone is a heart-breaker (the title gives that away, and that's only for starters! tho there are alternate interpretations of that as well) that one hardly needs the extra sadness of a whole other historical fiction layer.  The novel takes place on the island nation of Mauritius, a remote island in the Indian Ocean and the flashbacks take place, unbeknownst to young Raj at the time, during WWII. Enter David -- a startlingly blond-curly haired, very white boy that Raj befriends... David is Jewish, a European refugee and orphan who is in a prison camp set up on the island after his boat is denied entry into Palestine.

So, a lot to emotionally to chew on, but yet I felt somewhat disconnected/distant. There was just so many bad things going on individually with Raj and David, as well as their combined story, that it was hard to focus on either of them.  And here is where I really cringe even on my own criticism, it just seemed a bit overwrought and overall lacked freshness (from the flashback device and other well-worn plot devices).  It just felt like it should not have really been the case given both the setting of this exotic/litte known-about country and this really fascinating piece of history.  I sensed a better (or more well-told, better executed) story in there... a case of some 5-star ingredients that just didn't quite come together for me.

Salvage the Bones

Onto the second book of the year!  After spending nearly a month on 1Q84, I was definitely looking for a quick hit (or two).  I had a few books in mind, but while I was reading 1Q84, the short-list of 16 books for The Morning News' annual Tournament of Books (ToB) was announced, so all of a sudden I had to re-think/shuffle around my mental to-be-read list and figure out what I wanted to read between now and March when the competition takes place.

The good news is that that I had a good jump on things.  Funny enough, 1Q84 made the list as well as 3 of 4 of my last reads of 2011.  So I wanted to read a ToB book, so pretty much I knew a literary "palate-cleanser" was out of the question as these are typically some serious (or seriously literary) reads. 

I decided to go with Jesmyn Ward's Salvage The Bones.  I was aware of the book, but did not know much about it until starting to consider it... and then I read a bit about it and while it certainly qualified as a shorter read (250-ish pages), it was definitely not going to be a light one.  If I had to sum up the book in one word it would be...

Harrowing.

It is a coming-of-age story of sorts of 14-year old girl named Esch, living in poverty in the bayous of Mississippi with her widower father and three brothers: young Junior who has never known a mother, future basketball hopeful Randall, and brash Skeetah with a tender spot for his white pit bull named China. From the start, there is a sense of foreboding... a sense that things are not going to end well... and, for most of the novel, that doesn't even include the fact that Hurricane Katrina is on the way.

This is sad, tough, rough, stuff but balanced by Ward's beautiful prose. There is a poetic/lyrical quality to it, but I found that it more had the painful (pained?) riff of the blues, quite appropriate for the setting and the lives of this family.  It has the feel of a "classic" novel one may read in high school, though it would never get there due to "strong language and mature themes."

A caveat to animal, and particularly, dog lovers. While Esch is the emotional core of the novel, the spotlight is strongly shared with Skeetah and China, the latter a legend in neighborhood dog fights. There are some quite difficult and graphic passages that I imagine would be gut-wrenching for anyone, but particularly sickening to those of us with special relationships with (wo)man's best friend.

Not many downsides to report other than feeling my attention flagged/the story dragged at a few points in the middle.  Ratings-wise, it was a fairly solid 4-stars that may have briefly dipped to my unofficial 3.5 stars at those lower points.  But then there was the ending, the ending. Wow.  Based on one chapter alone, it was easy to see why Ward won the National Book Award.  It almost had me wavering and tipping it up to the highest rating, but alas I will stick to the 4 stars.  A heartbreaking read, but amazing book.

1Q84

Well, here I am!  I was really unsure whether or not I was going to continue doing this -- "blogging" (amazing how dated that term seems already!) and/or doing book posts -- but I figured I was unlikely to stop paying for the blog and the domain is paid up for another year or two, so might as well do something with it, right?!  While that won't win any awards for enthusiasm, I do still feel good about keeping these book posts alive... and we'll see what else... probably still some eye candy every now and then! :-)

The first book of the year is a big one, tho technically I started last year (December 22nd).  While not the fastest reader around, it is rare that I spend more than a week (or two, at the most) with one book, so tackling Haruki Murakami's magnum opus, 1Q84, for nearly a month of solid, committed reading time (typically at least a couple of hours a day) is really saying something.  My feeling is that there are so many books to read, so little time... why not knock say 3 books off the list vs. 1 like this?  

This was originally published as a trilogy in Japan and while I was credited 928 pages on this one... it really seemed quite a bit more.  Quite geekily, I maintain a running average of "density" with my Kindle books, i.e., how many Kindle locations make up a page.  After about 100 Kindle books, it has averaged out to be about 15 locations per page.  This book was nearly 24 locations per page!  In old-fashioned days (and confirmed by a trip to a real bookstore), this was a printed book with A LOT of words per page.  So using that average density, 1Q84 was more like 1400 pages.  But anyhow, a looong book!  

The good news was that any fears of wasting valuable reading time were quelled as I almost instantly became immersed in the world of 1984 (or is it?) Tokyo and the lives of Aomame, health club employee by day/hired assassin by night (with shades of Lisbeth Salander), and Tengo, math instructor and budding novelist.

To try to simply explain anything in this book seems nearly impossible, and besides it ruins the fun of knowing too much in advance. But to give you a hint, Murakami describes it best with this line: "Two story lines at work, with different starting points but running parallel to each other." It is a dense, detailed, and a quite deliberately paced work. Murakami makes reference to circular motions -- whirlpools, hurricanes -- and there is this twirling and spinning quality with aspects coming around again/being repeated... perhaps not always seeming to be moving, but in constant and sometimes furious motion. So while there was many a day (or week!) when progress felt slow, I still found it to be easy reading and compulsively intriguing.

Pop-culturally, I've decided 1Q84 is not so dissimilar to the TV series Lost. Interesting characters, complex plots involving the past and present, puzzles that are intricately pieced together, and yes... supernatural elements. It is those elements that may be the hinge on which one enjoyment door swings on this book. In Lost, if you lost it (ha!) when it came to the smoke monsters, islands disappearing, and such... you would likely have the same issues with 1Q84. I found myself open-minded/suspending belief for most of the fantastical aspects, though there were still a few that head-scratching/WTF?! moments. But other parts entered my real-world psyche. Suddenly every random stranger of Japanese descent seemed like a character from the book and, for pretty much every night for the last month, I looked up to the sky to confirm that there was still only one moon up there.

So that's likely enough of a hint to say that this is not a book for everyone. Even for some folks who I think might enjoy it, I honestly could not be totally sure. While it's breadth and depth were aspects I very much liked about the book, I could easily see how others would find it to be bloated and self-indulgent. Back to my Lost reference, I can also see where detractors would feel like that Murakami was making things up as he went along or leading readers off on unnecessary detours.

As proof of that "not everyone liking it," while I was well underway, 1Q84 was announced as one of the entrants in the 2012 Tournament of Books competition.  I am a member of the ToB group on Goodreads, and once the books are announced, folks tend to jump on nominated books.  One of the group moderators, who I typically have pretty good agreement with re: books, started on this one and abandoned it about a third-ways thru and absolutely eviscerated it in his review.  Funny enough, we said some of the same things and, as mentioned, I totally get why someone wouldn't like it (tho I am guessing, he probably can not say the same about those of us who did like it).

Onto my own rating, I felt that it did not have that "slam-dunk" feeling of 5 stars. However, there is this a sense of awe, achievement, and accomplishment -- for both Murakami and myself -- and despite the length and time commitment, I still found myself wanting the story to continue on.  So, I waffled (shocking!) and give it 4.5 stars but gave it a deserving nudge to 5 stars for Goodreads.

2011: A Year in Reading

Here it is, the 6th Annual Year in Books!

(If you are interested in past years, you can conveniently find them all in Best Books Of The Year category)...

Also a tradition, my book cover collage from the past year:

This year's collage was a bit challenging.  Granted all that I keep do and keep track of re: reading is a bit geeky, but I have to admit when I get close to the end of the year I am thinking about making this graphic and having it come out "right"... but 38 books didn't quite jive... but I don't think I did such a bad job with 2 rows each of 6 books, with a middle bulge of 7 books.

Here are this year's stats:

38 - Number of Books Read (tho two of them were Kindle singles with another short novella - more a short story than a novella! - so I'd really 'fess up to about 35 books, but let's say 38 "titles")

12,500 - Total Pages (my "goal" this year -- and likely going forward, well at least until I am retired and then can really read more, more more! -- is 12,000... so not bad, especially with another extended vacation this year)

79% / 21% - Fiction vs. Non-Fiction (pretty typical)

43% / 57% - Male vs. Female Authors (Believe it or not, for the first time in 6 years this is the first time I have read more by female authors than males... that always surprised me since I don't really consider myself a "macho" reader... early in the year, I had a streak of 6 books by female authors)

97% / 3%  - Kindle vs. Non-Kindle (Almost had my first all-digital book year, but alas read one book in paperback... Death at La Fenice, the first of series of books set in Venice that was the only book in the series not available on the Kindle)

74% / 26% - Never Read This Author Before vs. Authors I Have Read Before (A bit higher on the new authors this year... had been 66% for the past couple of years... always looking for something or someone new!)

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Each of the below book links go back to my original "review" if you'd like to learn more...

Non-Fiction Notables:  With only 7 non-fiction books, there is not a whole lot to write about... but alas will still highlight the 4 stand-outs.  Rafa by Rafael Nadal was pretty much your typical, standard, run-of-the-mill tennis autobiography -- which for me, meant it wasn't a very good "book" -- but Rafa, with all his quirks and insecurities -- is still a 5-star guy and certainly an anomaly in many ways for an elite athlete.  For my fellow avid readers, there isn't a better love letter to reading than Nina Sankovitch's Tolstoy and the Purple Chair.  Nina sets out to read a book a day (yes, you read correctly!) as a way to deal with her grief over the loss of her sister.  It's not a rote zip-bang-boom list of books read, but how books make us think and feel about our own lives.

Non-Fiction Runner-Up: While I got some grief in my household and by others who read the book for not rating it 5 stars, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand was still an amazing story of Louie Zamperini, a Olympic long-distance runner who ends up in WWII and into the Pacific Ocean... and into hands and prison camps of the Japanese... I dubbed the book, "Unrelenting."  My verdict was the I respected this meticulously researched book more than I "loved it" or felt that I really experienced it... but that still puts it far and above a lot of books from this year (and years past, for that matter).

Non-Fiction Book of the Year: While I didn't feel it was a "knock it out the ballpark" year with my non-fiction reads, my top pick goes to a book that made me care about two things I never thought I would care about: the science of the ocean/weather and the world of surfing... which narrows it down to Susan Casey's The Wave.  A literary combo of The Discovery Channel and ESPN it was a odd mix of a book, but compulsively readable. 

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Fiction Notables:  On Goodreads, I had two books that I rated 5 stars for the year... one was truly 5 stars and, needless to say, tops the list... the other was one of my beloved round-ups from 4.5 to 5 stars... after that, I had 4 other books that I rated 4.5 but rounded down to 4... and honestly, even as I type this, I don't know how to order them.

But before I get there, I will highlight some other books that were all quite good but didn't make it onto this final list.  First, the surprises... books that were critically acclaimed and/or award winners that didn't make the final cut.  Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad pretty much won every literary award out there (including the Tournament of Books), but I just felt like I had better experiences with other linked-stories-as-a-novel type books.  Pretty much anything Ann Patchett writes is going to get folks' attention, but State of Wonder was one of the biggest buzz novels of the year.  While I think Patchett created one of the best characters of the year in Dr. Annick Swenson and a novel with great atmosphere (set in the Amazon jungle)... and while your limberness of believability is supposed to be tested here, I was just stretched too much and it didn't all quite gel for me in the end.  The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach topped Amazon's Best Books of the Year list... again, quite good and would make my Top 10, but not my Top 5.  And just to wrap this up, others not making the cut, but on many other folks'/critics' lists:  The Family Fang, The Leftovers, We The Animals, and Swamplandia!.

Okay, onto the Final 7... and figuring out which of the 6 books rated 4.5 stars to not make it to the the Top 3... and oddly enough, I am starting with the one that I bumped up to 5 stars, Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire, the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy. A bit less fresh than the first book, it was still a thrilling read that always wanting me to get back to it (and that means a lot!).

Likewise, How To Talk to A Widower was another amazing read from Jonathan Tropper...  you may recall his This Is Where I Leave You was my top fiction pick of 2009.  I sense if I had read this book first, I may have felt differently about that book... again, it's an instance where a bold and fresh voice isn't quite as bold and fresh the second time around... but again, amazing writing and amazing author.  And I keep hearing his true masterpiece is The Book of Joe, which I will try to get to this year, so I another reason I am hedging my bets with this one.  

One of the more surprising reads of the year was James Hynes' Next.  I had never heard of this book, but it just landed in my lap when it was part of the Tournament of Books.  It's definitely not a book for everyone... taking place over the course of one day, with a hecka lot of flashbacks, it's the story of the life of one man.  The reader is lulled in with a lot of details and minutia, but one wallop of an ending.

Just missing the Top 3 cut is Amy Waldman's The Submission, a book that I thought might land near the top of the heap.  It was a brash, multi-perspective post-9/11 tale of anonymous design competition for Ground Zero that goes to a Muslim-American.  Provocative and testing even the most liberal thinkers, it was a great read... tho not quite staying with me as much as would have expected, and kind of wondering now how stereotypical it might have been vs. fleshed-out 'real' people, but still recall really liking it when I was reading it.

Are you still with me?  Here's the Top 3...

Fiction Second Runner-Up:  Just under the finishing line as a pre-Christmas read and perhaps getting that "late in the year" bump, Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending left me with more questions about the book and my own life than when I started.  The story is of a man in his 60s looking back on his college days and his group of friends and a woman he dated... his past comes back to haunt him and a secret uncovered.  Now, the plot is really not important here (at first, I was disappointed by the "reveal")... but the real story is how we remember things about other people and how our own memory, faulty at times, creates this very "shades of gray" narrative of our own life.  Short in length (about 160 pages), but thought provoking enough to move it into the winners' circle for the year.

Fiction First Runner-Up: If you told me back in January while I was a couple of of hundred pages in, that this book would be my runner-up of the year, I probably would not have believed you.  But I should know Barbara Kingsolver better by now and know she wouldn't disappoint me... and she ultimately didn't with The Lacuna.  This book requires patience (something that I am re-learning with my epic first book of 20102)... and that's a good thing... in this age of instant information and gratification, sometimes a slow and deliberate book is a lot more rewarding.  

Fiction Book of the Year:  And speaking of a long and epic read, my no-brainer top book of the year was definitely all that... Julie Orringer's The Invisible Bridge.  Very basically, the novel is about a Hungarian Jew in the years leading up to, during, and after WWII. Given his religious affiliation, you can imagine where this goess... but while a good chunk of this is a war novel, if that's not your thing don't be discouraged.  The only quibble I had with it was the title - which while explained in a scene of the book - doesn't quite capture the scope and emotions of this novel... but I can't come up with a better alternative.  The greatest testament I can give to Orringer is that she did make me feel the emotions of the main characters ... happy, hopeful, sad, betrayed, devastated... I kind of always (well, most of the time) thought I "felt" characters when I read books, but not to such an extent as in The Invisible Bridge.  In another year of some great reads, to have one book kind of leave the other in the proverbial dust is saying something.

The Perils of Morning Coffee (#38)

Well, here we are at the last book I read in 2011... but calling it a "book" might be a bit of a stretch... as it is an eBook original story that translated to about 50 print pages.

My motivation, much like my last read, was to squeeze in one more "book" before the end of the year and having read the first five books in the Sunday Philosophy Club/Isabel Dalhousie series, Alexander McCall Smith's The Perils of Morning Coffee certainly fit the bill. 

As far as where this fits into the series, it seems as if it would be Book 7.5, but no worries of any ongoing plot spoilers as long as you are past Book 4 (The Careful Use of Compliments) when Isabel's personal/home life took quite the dramatic turn.

I have a difficult time coming up with what to say about the full-blown books in the series which are pretty short/quick reads themselves, so I am really at a loss of words of what to say here.  But as with the rest of the series, this was a perfectly pleasant tale as Isabel is accused of being the "other woman" (you can imagine how she takes that news!). Over the course of these few dozens pages (errr... screen clicks), she uncovers what's really going on in her usual meddlesome manner.

Kind of a whimper-y way to another year of book posts, but what can I say... just a quick literary snack with this one!

The Sense of an Ending (#37)

Happy 2012!  As usual, still have some unfinished book post business for 2011... but not too bad this year, only one more book (and a quite small one!) to go.

I have found the Booker Prize to be a good personal literary barometer (of course, there have been exceptions), but to be perfectly honest a big reason I read Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending was to get one more book under my belt before the end of the year (yes, I was sensing an ending... thank you very much, I'm here all week!).  But while short, under 200 pages, this work certainly had the scope and feel like a much bigger novel, though detractors just may call it slow and meandering...

... and they would not be wrong. The older English gentleman who narrates this tale already knows -- or at least thinks he knows -- the secret from his past when the story begins, but Barnes takes his time to unravel it all. But beyond the plot, this central mystery, there is quite a bit of philosophizing about life, relationships, and a recurrent theme re: memory... of how we choose to tell the story of our own life and how we even view or own lives, both in an intentional and subconscious manner.

I have to admit, at first pass, I was not blown away by the "reveal" at the end.  I did not quite predict it, but then again, in novels of this nature, I don't tend to waste a lot of mental effort on trying to figure things out for myself, just allowing and trusting the author to do so.  But after turning the last page, I began wondering about the ending that was presented... all the puzzle pieces of what was told to the narrator... what he told us, including all that life philosophizing... and that's when I came to the realization that it was quite likely I still did not know the truth.  One needs only to go back to the title to be given that clue that are not given an ending, but the sense of one. Hmmm...

The more I think about this novella, the higher the rating seems to be going.  As I write this post, a few weeks removed from the book I admit I still find myself thinking about it.  Again, not the really anything regarding the plot but just the nature of life and memories.  As I have been doing quite a bit, I hedged and gave the book 4.5 stars, but rounded it down to 4 for Goodreads. While I thought it was exquisitely written and left me with all that pondering, I got thinking that maybe it crossed the line from being intricately constructed to out-right manipulative... but then again, that was likely the whole point!  Regardless, still highly rated and a good way to end another year of reading (well, almost... one more book to go)!

Swamplandia! (#36)

Well, first things first... I have seen it creeping up on my blog stats, but this post marks a milestone... Post #2000!  It's definitely been a crawl to get here.  This blog used a daily (or even multi-daily!) habit and these days it seems as if I only post as fast as I can read a book, which ain't very fast!  And, to be honest, reaching this milestone is making me ponder whether it is time to finally throw in the cyber0towel... but we shall see, I will at least power thru the final books of 2011 and the year-end wrap-up book post.

Despite being named among the best books of 2011, I was aware that Karen Russell's debut novel Swamplandia! was not the most beloved books of the year.  Goodreads did a piece on the NY TImes 100 Notable Books of the Year and this book had the dubious honor of being, one of the lowest (if not the lowest) reader-rated books from the list.  I suspected it was just a love it/hate it kind of book and had remained curious about since its publication in the spring and being a fan of "quirky" - tho I am learning that it is only to a certain gray-ish degree - I thought I would give it a shot.

It started out on-fire and, having avoided most of the negative reviews beforehand, I was having trouble figuring out what exactly was wrong with this story of a struggling alligator theme-park-owning family reeling from the loss of their wife/mother and headline act in the gator show. It was all a bit odd, but interesting, but then the story splits into two: a surreal-ish journey through the swamps with the two sisters and a more reality-based fish-out-of-water (or "gator out of the swamp"?!) storyline of the older brother's move to the mainland.

While there is much to appreciate about both stories, I suspect many readers will have a preference of one over the other. For me, while more "special" and certainly more literary, the sisters' story dragged on way too long, was just a tad too strange, was hard to visualize (couldn't get that mental picture of the setting) and lacking in purpose for my taste. I was much more engaged with the brother storyline though seemed to play second-fiddle and only served to ultimately pull the characters together again in a bit too tidy of an ending.

There is no denying Russell's literary talent and I enjoyed the characters and the premise as well, I just was not totally enamored with the novel. I contemplated about an alternate version where we join these characters a year or two before this books starts, a bit more of Swamplandia! and the mother, who are merely ghosts here. Still an interesting book, but one that I would only recommend on a case-by-case basis. 3.5 stars with Goodreads forcing a round-down to 3.

Two more books to go for 2011!   At the moment, I am tackling a literary behemoth that will take me into (and "count") for 2012, but before that I squeezed in two novellas (one pretty substantial and the other... well, not)... so still a bit more to go! 

The Art of Fielding (#35)

With this book post I am caught up, something quite rare ... and especially this late in the year when I am scrambling to get it all done for the year-end/best-of post (tho that always comes in January.

I wasn't quite sure about reading a "baseball" novel. I have nothing against the game, but just wasn't sure it would hold my interest for 500+ pages.  But the book had some buzz and was ending up on a lot of those year-end lists (Amazon picked it as its book of the year), so I figured I give it a shot.  While sport, and particularly baseball, as a metaphor of life is not the freshest concept out there, Chad Harbach ends up making it an enjoyable journey in his debut novel, The Art of Fielding.

Jumping in blissfully unaware, I thought it might be about life in the big (or even) minor leagues, so was surprised when the setting was a (fictional) small, private university in Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Superior. Likewise, while I thought the focus would be on baseball it quickly shifted to other members of the campus community, each with their own struggles in learning the lessons of life, both on and off the diamond.

While I wouldn't put it at the top of my list. Harbach makes some rookie errors here and there - including an ending that I didn't like as much as the rest of the book, that  likely puts it just outside my top 5 fiction reads of 2011.  Likewise, both times I have sat down to write about the book - first for my Goodreads review and here (which granted is just a pumped-up version of that review) - I just don't really don't know what to say about it... though again I hesitate  this shouldn't be inferred as a bad thing.  Maybe it is just the holiday season/end of the year that leaves one's brain scattered and/or tired.

But overall, I still had a great affection for this book... very like-able/engaging, lways wanting to get back to reading it (which is a very good sign/thing), and addictive-ly readable (80-ish chapters over 500 pages = a lot of "just one more chapter").

Breaking Dawn (#34)

Ah, approaching the middle of December and when I really feel the pressure to keep these book posts up-to-date so I can get to the big "year in review" post without much delay. 

It feels like I read Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn forever-ago as started it before the Italy trip and didn't finish to after!  I think I only read it a day or two at most during the trip (and on the loooong plane rides, of course), but overall I spent 30 days with it... waaay too long for any book, but that's just how it goes.

I am guessing the first question one would ask a 40-somethin' male about this book is... why?  Well, I was curious about the Twilight series from a pop-culture standpoint... and since I read the previous three books it seemed silly to stop before finishing it, despite not hearing great things about it from even "Twi-hards."  Also, I needed a mindless vacation read that I knew I could drop for approximately 10 days without really worrying about losing the plot or momentum on it (tho I did feel I lost momentum, though I think that had more to do with the book than me!).  Also, it was kind of a tradition.  Of my 3 trips to Europe, each time I brought along one of these books... so seemed to make sense to bring it along this time and also I seemed to time my reading of each book right before the movie came out... tho on this one, I had know many of the "spoilers" a long time ago.

Begrudgingly I have to admit that at the start, I was wondering what all the criticism about the book was about. While I have never taken these books very seriously, I still thought Meyer's writing continued to improve as the series moved along... tho her dialogue still could slip into that grey area between awful and unintentionally laughable. But overall, I was thinking it wasn't *that* bad.

Then I got about halfway through, took those ~10 days off to enjoy Italy and when I got back to the book, it just was a totally different animal... and just got worse and worse as it dragged itself to the finish line.

While I can't imagine anyone does NOT know the major plot points in this one at this time, I will still try to remain spoiler-free. But let's just say, while I didn't really have problems with the brand new character that makes their debut about halfway through, I just could not stand this character's name. In fact, I hated it so much that I think my eyes tired from the eye-rolling more than from reading. But the nail in the coffin -- or should I say the wooden stake thru the vampire -- was the final conflict, which was painfully dragged out and bogged down by so many unnecessary characters, that the "stars" of the series -- Bella, Edward, and Jacob -- just get lost in the shuffle. Let alone it being much ado about nothing.

In my 5-star rating system (with half-stars), I felt this was a fairly solid 2.5 stars, and that's crediting what I thought was a decent first half of the book. But on Goodreads, I rounded-down to 2 stars, though overall I still want to give overall credit to Meyer for being a good storyteller and for getting so many folks - particularly young people - to read, and more important be excited about reading.

Death in a Strange Country (#33)

As I type (which rarely corresponds when these posts), I am just a couple of days away from a return to Italy, with our arrival city being Venice... which by no coincidence at all, is the home to Donna Leon's lead character Commissario Guido Brunetti in Death in a Strange Country.  (Update: This is being posted almost 2.5 weeks -- which now seems like a lifetime ago -- after getting back from Italy... it was great!)

To continue sounding like a broken record (and my over-use of the "broken record" reference), it is difficult to write about books in a continuing series. Granted this is only Book #2 (of what now I believe is a 20-book series), but there just doesn't feel like there is a whole lot new to say.  I was not particularly blown away by Leon's writing or storytelling in the debut of the series, Death at La Fenice, and this book did not really sway me one way or another, but what does do quite well is to capture the spirit/essence of Venice and the attitude and/or charm (you choose!) of the Italian people.

Overall, I thought this installment was more involved, more intriguing and wider in scope than the first book, but it seemed to get unnecessarily complicated as it went along.  I can see folks either loving and hating the ending, though in this genre it always seems to get tied up quite quickly and conveniently as you flip (or click) through those final pages.  There are some intriguing developments with Brunetti's father-in-law, so I have no doubts that this will be explored more deeply in future books.

That said, these books are quick and easy reading and Brunetti is an interesting character, so I am fairly certain I will continue on with the series... to return to Venice, if only in my dreams