The Core of the Sun

The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo, 306 pages. Translated by Lola Rogers.
Vera and Mira are born into a dystopian alternate-Finland, where the gender rules from H. G. Wells's The Time Machine hold sway; women are either dim-witted elois, suitable for subservient breeding, or truculent morlocks, kept out of the gene pool and destined for life of drudgery. It's also a flavorless world where alcohol, nicotine, and even chili peppers are forbidden and almost impossible to find. This is a particularly difficult world for Vera (renamed Vanna), a savvy, attractive morlock who is passing for an eloi, and who is looking for her lost sister. She is burdened, at the same time, with a strong addiction to illegal capsaicin. When Vera and her dealer / fake boyfriend meet up with the members of the Gaian Transcendental Capaicinophilic Society, some of their problems are solved, but new problems explode.
Creepy in places, and a fairly taut thriller, this Finnish genre crossing novel is one of those read-in-one sitting books. Disturbing and fun.
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Nine Essential Things I've Learned about Life / Harold S. Kushner / 171 pp.

It's been a long time since I read this author's Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, and although my memory is not great, I suspect that there is a lot of overlap between that title and this one.  Never mind, Kushner still communicates fairly complicated ideas about God and faith in accessible but not dumbed-down language.  After a career serving as a rabbi to a congregation in Massachusetts and having lost a son to a genetic illness, Kushner's beliefs are hard-won and never glib.

Arcadia / Iain Pears, 510 pp.

I loved this author's An Instance of the Fingerpost, a wonderful  Restoration-era mystery filled with intricate plot twists and great character development.  And his The Dream of Scipio is one of my all-time favorites, so I was looking forward to Arcadia.

I'm happy to say I wasn't disappointed.  Arcadia is among other things, the story of Anterwold, a fantasy world created by Oxford academic Henry Lytten, old friend of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.  At least, Lytten thought it was merely a fantasy world until his cat-sitter, 15-year-old Rose, reports having met a Lytten counterpart in a land very much like Arcadia, accessed through a rusted pergola in Lytten's basement.  And then there is Angela, Lytten's old friend from his days in WWII British intelligence, who comes from where, exactly?  How is it that she speaks scores of languages fluently, anyway?

Pears sets up a delightful narrative echo chamber in which the reader never quite knows where, or when, it is, but with notes of Shakespeare, Orwell, the Bible, as well as Tolkien and Lewis, it almost doesn't matter.  Cerebral, sly, dry, and playful, Arcadia has the added benefit of not taking itself and its complicated narrative-about-narrative too seriously.  Because I am attempting to write a snide-free review, I will not name those authors, specializing in time travel and alternate universes, guilty of that particular sin; perhaps it's no coincidence that Pears doesn't mention them either?

The Catastrophist

The Catastrophist / Lawrence Douglas 275 pgs.

Daniel Wellington is an art historian and quickly rising star in his field.  He has a little bit of a break with reality when his wife gets pregnant and he panics...in a BIG way.  Unfortunately she miscarries and Daniel MOSTLY comes back to real life but not totally.  Now he is wanting to have an affair, he is lying about his family history and having a few too many moments when he is too honest with colleagues, students, and friends.  He suspects his wife of cheating on him and he is basically a complete mess.

This book is entertaining.  You can see the train wreck coming.  It is moving in slow motion so you aren't going to be too surprised, except by the fact that Daniel doesn't step off the track.

Notorious RBG

Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik,
227 pages

Over the past several years, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become something a cult cultural icon, largely for her searing, plain-language dissents. This biography gives an overview of RBG's life as a groundbreaking lawyer, law professor, and as the second woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court. It's not an in-depth examination of her life, nor does it question her judgment or ideals as more comprehensive biographies might; it's obvious that the authors are great admirers of RBG, and this book is definitely not for those who tend to agree with the conservative justices. But it does offer a fun glimpse of a trailblazer who, even in her 80s, still does more push-ups in a day than I do in a week, and the annotated opinions are cool.

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell, 288 pages

What do you think would happen today if a 19-year-old aristocratic runaway fled his home country to help revolutionaries overthrow their government half a world away? Probably nothing good. But that's exactly what the Marquis de Lafayette did in the American Revolutionary War, abandoning his teenage bride and heading to America to pledge his allegiance to George Washington (after whom he eventually named his son) and fight for the colonists' freedom from England. In this book, Vowell presents a view of Lafayette's (and France's) role in the Revolutionary War. It's refreshing, it's fun, it's funny (in Vowell's dry wit). It's pure Vowell, in that it makes history fun and points out how what happened more than 200 years ago is still relevant today. Well worth a read.

Also: I listened to the audiobook, which is read primarily by Vowell, with an A-list hipster cast of actors providing the voices for the historical figures. John Hodgman, Patton Oswalt, Fred Armisen, John Slattery, Alexis Denisof... they were all fantastic. Give it a listen.

The Underdogs

The Underdogs by Mike Lupica  280 pp.

This was the last book for this season's Treehouse Book Club. Twelve year old Will Tyler is an amazing running back whose whole life is football. When the town he lives in can no longer afford to fund their team Will finds a way to get a major sponsorship for their team. Then the challenge was having enough players for the team. They manage to get the bare minimum by including one girl player and convincing his hard-working, disabled dad to be the coach. The Bulldogs are up against a season battling fully funded and manned teams while all the players do double duty on both offense and defense. Lupica includes lots of detailed game descriptions along with the personal drama going on in the players lives. This is a good one for sports fans.

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald, 394 pages

Quiet, shy bookstore clerk Sara Lindqvist has traveled from her home in Sweden to the tiny, dying town of Broken Wheel, Iowa, to meet and stay with her book-loving pen pal, Amy Harris, for two months. But when Sara gets to Broken Wheel, she discovers that Amy has died of a long illness that she'd kept hidden from Sara. While some (probably most) people would leave town and either go back home or embark on a different adventure, Sara stays, quickly falling in love with the quirky town and its residents, and sets up a pop-up bookstore, using Amy's vast book collection as her stock.

This is a cute book, and one that's just begging to be made into a romantic comedy. The characters are charming (I particularly liked Poor George and Grace, the tough broad (I think that word was made for this character) who runs the diner); the plot is full of pratfalls (Drunk guy in the bushes outside the church? Our heroine in a cheesy costume for a town event? Check and check); and you know almost from the outset how this book is going to end. But as predictable as it may be, it's a fun read. Fans of Fried Green Tomatoes, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, even Bridget Jones will want to check this one out.

The Three-Body Problem

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, 399 pages, translated by Ken Liu, audio narrated by Luke Daniels.

A book that starts with the Cultural Revolution in 1960s Beijing and then spins out about four light years. Along the way there's an online game, the Three-Body. Those in the Three-Body  they have a problem, namely that the world they inhabit has a tendency to self-destruct. There are too many suns, it gets too hot, and then it gets too cold and the inhabitants have to use some extreme measures to survive.
The people who play the game start to think about it all differently when they realize that maybe it's not a game.
There are a lot of interesting characters and some convoluted storylines. It is easy to see why The Three-Body Problem won the Hugo last year.

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February totals

A hearty, Leap Day William welcome to new bloggers, Jeff and Rob!

Amy 5/2216
Christa 16/4527
Jeff 5/1316
Kara 9/3304
Karen 6/1935
Kathleen 8/2573
Linda 5/1724
Patrick 8/1435
Rob 1/144

TOTAL 63/19,174