Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman

Anne Fadiman, the author of Ex Libris, a book of essays about reading, is the best friend all readers and word lovers wish they had. With a gentle self-mocking humor, she examines the part books have played in her, her husband’s, her parents’, her  brother’s and her friends’ lives.  She discusses books: the buying, collecting, reading, shelving, inscribing and care of them.  She describes a marriage in which merging book collections is a more difficult task than dividing chores or managing a family budget. She depicts a family that pores over a restaurant menu, not for descriptions of the food they might eat but to search for spelling and grammatical errors. While reading older books, she mourns for the vocabulary and rejoices at the gender roles we have lost. She explains why parents’ reading for their own pleasure is important to instilling a love of reading in their children.  And, although the readers know that Anne and her family and friends are probably smarter and better educated than we are, she lets us know that the love of books (any and all) is a common denominator which unites rather than divides. 

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The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Two brothers, born in Calcutta in the 1940’s, are close in age but miles apart in temperament. Subhash, the older, is responsible and obedient while his brother, Udayan, is brash and passionate. The apolitical Subhash leaves India to attend graduate school in Rhode Island but returns after Udayan is killed by police for his radical political activities. Because he is unhappy with the bleak future his brother’s pregnant young widow faces in India, he marries her and takes her back to Rhode Island. Here Gauri gives birth to a baby girl, Bela, whom Subhash regards as a daughter rather than a niece. But Gauri cannot invest herself in this family. Despite his kindness and self-sacrifice, she cannot accept Subhash as a substitute for the soul mate who had been her first husband. She is unhappy and distant toward both him and Bela, preferring academic studies to motherhood. Subhash cannot try enough for the both of them and eventually the family separates in such a brutal way they can never reconcile. Yet life moves along. Gauri finds a career in academia in California and Subhash continues his career in Rhode Island. Bela, without knowing the story of her biological father, becomes a rebel in her own way, rootless, traveling across the country to promote sustainable agriculture but always anchored to Subash, her devoted “father”. The Lowland is a story of immigration and assimilation. But Gauri, burdened with anger and self-absorption, would have been as unhappy as a traditional Indian wife as she was as a displaced American one.

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The Secret Rooms by Catherine Bailey

What begins as a trip to do research for an upcoming book turns into a real-life mystery for television producer Catherine Bailey.  The Secret Rooms reads like something in a PBS Masterpiece or Downton Abbey script:  historian goes to giant English castle to research for a book and is let into a series of rooms that have been completely sealed off for more than 60 years.  While going through the extensive trove of family letters, she notices that all of the letters from the person she is most interested in, John, the 9^th Duke of Rutland, are missing for about six months of World War I.  Not only that: all of the letters from all of the family members are missing during the exact same dates.  Another queer fact pops up during this mystery: John died in the series of rooms where all of the family records were kept though he was suffering from a preventable illness.  What was he feverishly working on until the moment of his death?  Her original book idea abandoned due to a lack of primary sources, the thought continually nags at her: why, if the 9^th Duke was such a meticulous records keeper, would such a large bunch of letters be missing?  What transpires is a twisting hunt through decades of family and government records. 

After much searching, Bailey discovers that there was not one gap in the family’s letters, but three.  Once again, not only John’s letters, but those of the entire family were missing for the periods beginning on August 23^rd 1894, June 6^th 1909 and July 7^th 1915.  While she surmises that the gap in 1915 could potentially have something to do with the war, the gaps for 1909 (when John was stationed at the British Embassy in Rome) and the gap in 1894 (when John was only eight years old) are particularly puzzling.  Was John hiding something that he did or was he covering for someone else?

Bailey takes us on a thrilling ride through the early 20^th British aristocracy and the secrets they kept.  This book is a great choice for both readers who enjoy the writing style of Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City and those who enjoy the world of Downton Abbey.  The Secret Rooms is a fascinating true history of a family who would do almost anything to see their estate and way of life survive.  

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The Gallery of Regrettable Foods by James Lileks

In this day and age people from all walks of life fret about the obesity epidemic. Why, we ask, are people struggling with this problem more now than in previous decades? Conventional wisdom says that the causes are too many snacks, too many sugary drinks and too little exercise. These logical conclusions are probably correct, but a reader of The Gallery of Regrettable Foods may discover another possible reason. Perhaps the food served in previous decades just did not look or taste good enough to tempt one to overeat.  James Lileks has been collecting post-war cook books and pamphlets for many years and has compiled the best (or worst) of them in this book. Here is a portrait of an earlier America when no one worried about salt or fat, salad was made with gelatin, famous chefs cooked with marshmallows, married women used their husbands’ first names and ethnic food meant a teaspoon of chili powder or soy sauce in a casserole. Do you need a new idea for refreshments for your sophisticated cocktail party? Try toast! Or jellied calf’s liver! Or frankfurters in aspic! There are few recipes in this book, just a lot of unappetizing pictures and some hilarious observations by Mr. Lileks. The Gallery of Regrettable Food will make you laugh out loud.

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At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcon

At Night We Walk in Circles is a book for the patient reader. Its exposition slowly sets the stage for the meeting of the two main characters: Henry the playwright and Nelson the actor. Nearly fifteen years earlier, during a war of rebellion in an unnamed South American country, Henry had been imprisoned for writing a seditious play, “The Idiot President.” Now that politics and rebellion are no longer an issue, he has planned a revival of the play with a three-man touring group.  Nelson, a rather naïve and directionless young man, joins the cast, leaving behind his widowed mother and estranged girlfriend, Ixta.  As the troupe travels inland, performing in small mountain villages, Henry tells Nelson more about his imprisonment. In the last village, Nelson becomes involved with the elderly mother of a ruthless drug dealer, who believes Nelson is her long-lost youngest son. When he begins to regret having ended his relationship with Ixta, he suddenly bolts, deserting the mother, heading back to the city and angering the drug dealer who sends his thugs after Nelson to exact revenge. Back in the city, Nelson is a changed man, more aggressive and more resolved to revive his relationship with Ixta, who is pregnant and living with another man. Eventually, a tragedy occurs and although a mysterious narrator has been hinting at a bad outcome for Nelson throughout the book, the reader is taken by surprise by the actual event. 

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The Returned by Jason Mott

This book is about the life of Harold and Lucille Hargrave whose world is turned upside down with a knock on the door.  Their son died 50 years ago and he has now returned from the dead.  At eight years of age Jacob is exactly how Lucille remembered him.  All over the world loved ones are returning from the dead.   What would you do if your loved one was back from the dead?

Lucille and Harold live in the small town of Arcadia and with so many people returning it is difficult to find room for all of them.  The Federal Bureau of the Returned starts to take over the situation and many of the townsfolk are not too happy.  One of the struggles that everyone is having is that they do not know why people are returning and if it should be considered a miracle or a warning of something to come.

This was a really good read and really made me think more about life and death.  The author’s note at the end of the novel really gives a food feel for why the author wrote this story.  This is a good read for anyone who is interested in the afterlife.  Or if you are curious as to what the world could become if all our loved ones returned.    

Want to read more about the returned? Jason Mott wrote some short stories as prequels to The Returned they  are in e-book form and can be found through the library.  They are, “The Choice,” “The First” and “The Sparrow.”   These short stories give more background information on some of those that were returned in his novel, The Returned.

Jason Mott’s Novel is being made into a television program called, The Resurrection.  It premiers on Sunday March 9 @ 9/8c on ABC.  Check out more about the show here: http://abc.go.com/shows/resurrection

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Snow Hunters by Paul Yoon

Yohan, a North Korean soldier who spent several years in a prisoner-of-war camp, refused to be repatriated after the 1953 Armistice brought the Korean War to an end. So, the United Nations arranged for his passage to a coastal town in Brazil where he lived and worked with a Japanese tailor.   In this foreign town in a distant land with a strange language, the soldier finds a home and kindness from strangers, most particularly his employer, the Japanese tailor, Kiyoshi, a refugee from another war.  In war-torn Korea, Yohan had witnessed a family walking precariously across the snow-covered war ruins of their bombed-out village, filling their pockets, seemingly salvaging something from nothing. These were snow hunters, people struggling to sustain themselves in lives that had been irrevocably changed. In Snow Hunters, Yohan does the same. The situation may be less physically dire, but Yohan’s search for belonging in a very foreign place is also a difficult task which takes patience and resilience. The fact that Yohan’s employer and closest friend is Japanese, a nationality that was long the oppressor of Korea, shows how people can adjust to new circumstances. As Yohan looks back on his early life, the reader discovers that he never had much opportunity for choice. His was a foreordained fate: farmer, orphan, soldier.  Then, as a prisoner of war, at the point in his life when he was most vulnerable, he was offered a choice. He made a most daring decision and his life was changed forever.    

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