Back to Blood

Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe  704 pp.

Miami is a melting pot of immigrants. A large part of the population is Cuban and the Cuban community is the main focus of this novel. Police Officer Nestor Camacho has become a pariah to his family and his Cuban neighborhood. Nestor is called a traitor for, in attempting to save the life of a Cuban trying to enter the country and preventing him from setting foot on land. Then Nestor has to face his superiors for doing an "unapproved" interview with the press following the incident. To compound things further, Nestor's girlfriend Magdalena dumps him for her boss, a psychiatrist who treats pornography addiction. Add in Russian millionaires, Jewish New Yorker senior citizens. an art forger, and a Haitian French professor who insists he and his kids are French and not Haitian and you have a jumbled mix of characters. The storylines of the characters cross, merge, and mingle in a plethora of ways that may or may not be resolved by the end of the book. I listened to the audio version with excellent narration by Lou Diamond Phillips. But in spite of the excellent performance by Phillips, the book was just so-so and way too long.

Tetris

Tetris by Box Brown, 253 pages

Tetris, that staple of the 1980s video gaming, has a long and interesting history that takes it from Soviet computer programmers to Japan and the U.S. by way of years of litigation and arguing between the USSR and various gaming giants, including Nintendo, Atari, and Sega. Box Brown recounts this fascinating history in Tetris, telling the story in a black, white, and yellow comic format. He had quite the monumental task in distilling the legal history and all of the players into something palatable for the masses, and for the most part he succeeds, though there are scattered instances where I had to backtrack to figure out which guy was on which side of the argument. On the whole, I like what he did with the book, particularly his discussion of the design of the game. Worth a read, if you're interested in video game history (or at least had a Game Boy back in the day).

The Starlit Wood

The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales edited by Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe, 392 pages

This collection pulls together new versions of classic fairy tales, with authors giving new twists to the old stories, sometimes to the point that the original tale is almost entirely hidden. Some of the original stories are well-known ("Rumplestiltskin," "Hansel & Gretel," "Thumbelina") and some are more obscure, at least to me ("The Thousand Eyes," "The Mouse, The Bird, & the Sausage," "The Tale of Mahliya and Mauhub and the White-Footed Gazelle"). All offer a fresh perspective, often giving agency to characters (mainly female) who previously had none.

Generally speaking, I really enjoyed these new takes on classic tales. My favorites are the absolutely horrifying "Some Wait," which is a new take on "The Pied Piper of Hamelin"; the absolutely hilarious "Even the Crumbs Were Delicious," which sets "Hansel & Gretel" in a drug dealer's house; and "Seasons of Glass and Iron," which allows the women of "The Glass Mountain" and "The Black Bull of Norroway" to save each other. But really, all of these are good stories. Props to the authors and to Parisien and Wolfe for bringing them together.

Martha Jefferson

Martha Jefferson: an intimate life with Thomas Jefferson / William G. Hyland Jr.

Martha Wayles Skelton was a young widow when she met Thomas Jefferson.  By most accounts, he was quickly smitten with her and she with him.  They had a loving and happy marriage for ten years before she died at a young age after having not recovered from childbirth.  Her death devastated Jefferson who did not leave his room for weeks afterwards.  Although she didn't live to serve as the first lady, there is a lot of evidence that she influenced Jefferson's thinking a lot.

Unfortunately for historians, Jefferson destroyed all of the letters between he and his wife so the biography is a bit sketchy but Martha still comes across as a force.

Negroland

Negroland / Margo Jefferson 248 pgs.

A wonderful memoir of growing up in Chicago and being part of the elite of black society.  Jefferson tells of her childhood.  Her dad a physician, her mom dedicated to raising her and her sister to stay at the top of the class structure within the community.  Margo and her sister were given the best education, did the best extracurricular activities, learned how to behave in all situations.  But as the girls grow up, things are changing a bit.  The civil rights movement, feminism, ideas about race and culture make the some of the lessons learned as a girl less important.  Jefferson is a wonderful writer and this book does a great job of telling its story.  Thought provoking.

Demon

Demon: Volume 1 / Jason Shiga 166 pgs.

When times get tough and you just can't take it anymore, what are your options?  Jimmy Yee has decided to end it all.  First he hangs himself, then slits his wrists, then shoots himself...but each time he wakes up and is alive and well.  Finally when he steps in front of a truck and wakes up in the hospital with a daughter who he doesn't recognize.  This is when he realizes that all of his attempts WERE successful but each time, he takes over the body of the person closest to him and wakes up in their body.  Then things get interesting.  Not for the faint of heart.

The Hawley Book of the Dead

The Hawley Book of the Dead by Chrysler Szarlan   332 pp.

Revelation "Reve" Dyer is an illusionist. She and her stage magician husband, Jeremy, own their own Las Vegas theater where they perform for thousands. Reve accidentally kills Jeremy during the same "Defying the Bullets" trick that killed magician Chung Ling Soo in 1918. Someone switched the blanks in the pistol for live bullets and it becomes clear that whoever that was is after her also. Reve and her three daughters move to Hawley Corners, Massachusetts, a strange, abandoned town with a mysterious history involving Reve's family, When her twin teenage daughters vanish in the woods Reve desperately searches for them with the help of a childhood friend and her first love who is now the chief of police. The appearance of a mysterious book leads Reve to investigate her magical inheritance and expand her powers to fight against the malevolent man who has taken two of her daughters and enchanted the third. This is an interesting, very detailed story. There were a few places that I wished the action moved a little faster but all in all it's a good read.

Infomocracy

Infomocracy / Malka Older 380 pgs.

In the future, elections only occur once every ten years so there is time for governing.  In this new order, countries don't exist anymore and the world is broken into "centenals," or groups of 100,000 voters.  Each area elects a party, most of which are corporate backed. The "microdemocracy" election is run by Information, a company that is Google-like providing information and services to citizens mostly through their handheld devices.  Ken is a political operative for Policy1st and Mishima works for Information. Their paths cross and after an attack on the election debate, they work together to figure out if there is election fraud afoot.

Maybe a bad book to be reading during this election season, maybe a great book to read now.  I'm really not sure.  I leave you with this quote from page 291 "...but democracy is of limited usefulness when there are no good choices, or when the good choices become bad as soon as you've chosen them, or when all the Information access in the world can't make people use it."

Today will be different

Today will be different / Maria Semple 275 pgs.

The book starts with Eleanor detailing how TODAY will be different.  "Today I won't swear....My face will be relaxed...Today I will radiate calm."  You get the idea that this day's goals will be quite a struggle.  And shortly into the day, we realize how much so.  She has a lunch date with a "friend" that she does not like, her third grader is sick at school, and she discovers her husband has told his office he is on vacation for a week (news to Eleanor).  Eleanor is writing a graphic novel, she even got an advance...but today we find out that was eight years ago and her editor doesn't even work at the publishing company any more. I guess nobody has really been on pins and needles for that book. We find out Eleanor has a few relationships in crisis but one of them is not with her husband, the hand surgeon Joe.  But wait a minute, where exactly is Joe?

This book happens in one day but with flashbacks so you can get the back story of all the important characters.  Maybe because Eleanor and I are similar ages, maybe because I can relate with her being overwhelmed with her life, maybe because I like a good laugh and a reason to think, I really enjoyed this book.

The Sea of Monsters

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan, 279 pages

Book two of Riordan's Percy Jackson series finds Percy, Annabeth, and their new pal Tyson searching for the Golden Fleece (and satyr Grover) in the titular Sea of Monsters (better known to us regular humans as the Bermuda Triangle). The book is again action-packed and laced with plenty of kid-friendly humor. My eight-year-old can't wait for us to start in on book three, The Titan's Curse.