Witness the Night / Kishwar Desai 242 p.

A murder mystery combined with stringent social commentary set in Punjab.  Simran Singh is a social worker sent to investigate the case of a thirteen-year-old girl found badly injured but alive amidst the murdered bodies of her entire extended family.  She's been imprisoned, and while it's clear that local authorities would like to hold her solely responsible and be done with it, Simran has her doubts.  The story unfolds in the alternating perspectives of Simran and the child, whose memories have an intense dream-like quality.  Touching on issues of infanticide and the deplorable state of  women in the region, Desai manages to be both outraged and cool at the same time.  Very good.

Spinoza Problem / Irvin Yalom 321 p.

A strange and beautiful book, this is the fictionalized story of Baruch Spinoza, the 17th century Jewish-Dutch philosopher, and Alfred Rosenberg, one of Hitler's 'philosophers'.  The connection is that as a young man, Rosenberg develops a passion for the German poet Goethe, and is horrified to discover that Goethe was greatly inspired by the work of Spinoza, a Jew.  He struggles to make sense of this seeming conundrum throughout his life.  His failure to understand Goethe, Spinoza, and ultimately, Hitler himself leads to his downfall. He is a horrifying person but in Yalom's hands he isn't a caricature, and we are left feeling mostly sorry that a reasonably talented mind was put to such terrible use.

I knew very little about Spinoza before reading this and I loved Yalom's portrayal of him.  Fully ostracized from the Dutch/Portuguese Jewish community for his writings on Hebrew scripture and the Divine (which were later banned by the Catholic church as well), he lived a quiet life as a lens grinder while continuing to write works which influenced the course of Western thought. 

Les Miserables / Victor Hugo 1432 p.

Our Adult Summer Reading program choice.  I had read it 25 years ago, forgotten it, and enjoyed it again the second time.  I was surprised to find that I liked quite a few of Hugo's rather long-winded passages about the progress of human history, the rights of women and men, and social justice.  (Up to a point, of course - he does tend to like to hear himself write.)

Bring up the Bodies / Hilary Mantel 410 p.

The sequel to Wolf Hall, and written with equal smoothness.  Both books annoy me and I don't fully understand why.  I suppose it's our main character, Thomas Cromwell himself.  It feels as though we are meant to see him as a higher being than all those around him, but sheesh, he doesn't have a lot of competition.  Yes, he loves his children, dead and living; yes, he doesn't beat his servants, but for this he and Hilary want to give him a medal?  For me he was far too efficient about dispatching Anne and her friends, disgusting though they may have been.  He'll get his comeuppance in part 3, but I doubt it will make me feel any better.

Green Arrow and Black Canary: Five Stages

Green Arrow and Black Canary: Five Stages by various authors; graphic novel; 128 pages. 

So I've made a bit of a jump here:  I've gone from an origin story to a death story in two volumes.  Note to self:  check into these things instead of just picking random volumes. 

In this very recent storyline, Black Canary and Green Arrow are back together as a couple.  They spend most of this volume taking down a supervillain named Cupid, who uses her love potion to control the minds of those around her--and who is fixated on Ollie as her next conquest.  That story is pretty good, even if I only caught the second half.  The art is so-so, but the relationship between Arrow and Canary is sweet and believable.  The second-to-last issue collected here ends with GA and BC getting a call from Green Lantern  to report to JLA headquarters, and heading off.  The final issue in this volume is such a non sequitur that I have trouble even understanding its inclusion:  we pick back up with these characters at the climax of the Blackest Night crossover event, when an evil force has taken control of any hero who's been brought back from the dead, including Green Arrow.  Ollie watches helplessly from inside his own head as he attacks everyone he's ever cared about.  To their credit, Ollie's friends and loved ones do their best to stop him--Canary even goes so far as to try her sonic scream on him--but none of it works.  Eventually, though, the heroes are forced to, I assume, kill him in order to save themselves and the planet.  Thus ends this volume, and once again I'm left wondering who as DC is responsible for organizing these collections, and what they were smoking the day they worked on this one....

Bellwether Revivals

Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood, 420 pages

Eden Bellwether is a strange man. He's rich, talented, and more intelligent than can be believed. He's also narcissistic and believes he has the ability to hypnotize and possibly heal people through music. Our protagonist, the blue-collar Oscar, is initially taken with Eden, but as he spends more time around Eden and his "flock" of friends, the less comfortable he becomes and the more sure Oscar is that something bad is going to happen.

Bellwether Revivals reminded me a bit of The Great Gatsby and Atonement in its portrayal of the upper echelon, though the suspenseful buildup of the story would almost place it in the horror genre. I had trouble getting through this one, but I suspect that has more to do with the other things going on in my life than with Wood's writing. I wish I'd read it when I had more time to devote to it.

The age of desire, by Jennie Fields

An imaginative treatment of a real period in the life of Edith Wharton.   At 45, Edith, who has her own inherited money, has for many years been in a loveless marriage to Edward “Teddy” Wharton, a wealthy man of no great intellectual depth.  They live somewhat separate lives.  They winter in Paris, which she loves and Teddy hates, and summer at “The Mount,” their country estate, where Teddy is happiest.  They also maintain a couple of apartments in New York City.  In Paris in 1907, she is introduced, by her great friend Henry James, to William Fullerton Morton, an American journalist working for the Times in Paris.  Fullerton, as she calls him, is younger, dashing, and irresistible.  He’s also a bounder, bisexual, and amoral, as we come to learn after Edith falls into a passionate affair with him, a true sexual awakening for her.  Edith had an unhappy childhood, mitigated by her governess, Anna, who is German.  Anna remains with Edith and becomes her secretary, friend, and the “first reader” of Wharton’s increasingly successful novels.   During this period, Teddy begins to exhibit what today would be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, his ill health intensified by the suspicion that his wife is under Fullerton’s spell.  Anna, who loves both Edith and Teddy, is torn by the conflicting desires that surround her.   I found the book fascinating.  I believe I’ve only read Ethan Frome of Wharton’s many books, and it reading this novel will drive me to read Wharton’s longer and more complex books (or maybe watch the movies!).   The author weaves the actual events skillfully in with the imagined conversations and scenes.  During this period, both Anna and Edith form life-changing emotional attachments that threaten to destroy their bond, and it is this relationship that the book is truly centered upon.   368 pp.

You are the love of my life, by Susan Richards Shreve

Lucy, a single mother of 12-year-old Maggie and 5-year-old Felix, is living more or less happily in New York.  She has had a long-term, somewhat hopeless relationship with the children’s father, who they all call “Uncle Reuben.”  She is a noted children’s book author, and the older, married Reuben is her editor, who she met in her early twenties.  She found her own father, a suicide by hanging, when she was quite young and it has made her a very private person.  Her mother, who was French, is also long dead by 1973, when the action of the book takes place.  Lucy decides to leave Reuben and her New York life for the charming Washington DC neighborhood where she still owns the house her father died in.  It is the time of Watergate.   The women of the neighborhood form a tight-knit group around one central queen bee figure, but not just Lucy has secrets to protect as it turns out.  OK for a vacation read but not great …  304 pp.

Green Arrow: Year One/Andy Diggle

Green Arrow:  Year One by Andy Diggle and Jock; graphic novel; 160 pages

For my first foray into Green Arrow, I thought I should start at the beginning (or at least, one of the more interesting of the many origin stories for this character).  Oliver Queen is a billionaire playboy not unlike Bruce Wayne's public persona.  The difference is that if the scratch the surface of Olive Queen, you find...more surface.  He's a thrill-seeking, hard-drinking womanizer who cares for little beyond his own pleasure.  But all of that changes when a double-cross lands him stranded on a deserted island, forced to fend for himself and fight off the forces of nature for his own survival. 

Loved this book!  I'm glad I went with one of the more recent GA origins, as this seemed to really fit what little I know of the character (I've only caught peripheral glimpses of him through Batman and Birds of Prey, but I like what I have seen!).  Of course there's more going on on the island than my blurb would lead you to believe, but that would be telling.  This is a fun book that manages to pay homage to the older versions of Green Arrow (boxing glove arrow, anyone?) without being too campy.  Yes, there are a few moments where I had to stretch my sense of disbelief (like the fact that Ollie is shooting with a broken arm, or that his "English long bow" is, in fact, quite short), but overall, this was a quick, fun introduction to the character. 

The World's Greatest Idea

The World's Greatest Idea: the fifty greatest ideas that have changed humanity by John Farndon 317 pgs.

This book is chock full of great ideas that have changed the world from weaving and spinning to the Internet.  I loved the short lesson on each and why it is important.  I've never tried to develop a list like this and probably couldn't so am glad that John Farndon and his panel of big brains have done it for me.  Fun to read and enlightening.

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