10. All Other Nights by Dara Horn

My friend Adriana recommended some websites to me when I asked for book suggestions. I found the description of All Other Nights on one of those websites, and immediately requested it from the library.

This is the story of Jacob, a young Jewish soldier in the American Civil War. He is recruited to act as a spy for the Union, and his missions include killing his uncle who plotted to assassinate Lincoln, and marrying a young Jewish woman doing spy work for the Confederacy. He unexpectedly falls in love with his wife while he is supposed to be collecting evidence against her, but they are separated when her sister turns him in just as Jacob reports his sister-in-law to his superiors. Jacob reads of his wife's death in prison, and later suffers devastating injuries during a Confederate raid. After returning home to New York, he learns of the possibility that his wife is alive and well. He sets out to find her, and eventually meets their daughter.

This book was interesting with detailed, engaging story-telling. The experiences of Jewish Americans during this era was something that I had never thought about. Although this was a novel, the author was inspired by many actual people (detailed in an Author's Note at the end) and I came away feeling as though I may have learned something new.

I had a couple of problems with the novel, though. Throughout his story, Jacob is unable to say no to people. His parents arrange a marriage for him, and instead of refusing he runs away and joins the army. His superiors order him to murder his uncle, and he does it despite his doubts about it. He is asked to marry a stranger in order to collect evidence, and he goes through with it. We don't really get any insight into why he does this, especially when he is racked with guilt over his actions. Also, the novel ended somewhat abruptly. During a chaotic attack on the southern town in which he found his wife alive and well, Jacob is attempting to flee to the north. It's quite suspenseful, and you're not sure what's going to happen. It feels very much like the middle of the story. Then Jacob's wife shows up and he sees his daughter for the first time and it just... ends. It's just over. While it was an enjoyable read, I just didn't know what to make of the ending.

9. In the Woods by Tana French

This book was recommended to me by Fat Bridesmaid. I'm definitely going to have to read her other suggestions too, because I really liked this one.

I read In the Woods on a Sunday, and after I told Colin about it, he decided to read it too. This post has been on hold for awhile, because there's no way I can write it without spoilers and I didn't want to spoil it for him. So everyone has their fair warning, right?

SPOILERS TO FOLLOW.

This story centers around a young detective named Adam Robert Ryan, who tells us about working to solve a young girl's murder. Rob has a very close relationship with his partner, Cassie, and she knows more about him than any of their colleagues. As a child, Rob was known as Adam to his best friends Jamie and Peter. He can remember almost nothing of their childhood together, nor of the day that they disappeared in the woods by their town and he was found clutching a tree, with blood soaked through his shoes. No trace of Jamie or Peter has ever been found. However, Rob does not consider his story to be especially tragic, and leads his life in relative anonymity. Until the Katy Devlin case lands on his desk. Katy's body is found at the site of an archaeological dig in the town where Rob lived until Jamie and Peter (and Adam) disappeared. Throughout the investigation, Rob and Cassie begin to suspect that something was wrong in Katy's home. Her sisters seem troubled and the detectives focus on the nature of the father's relationships with his daughters. The case takes on a life of its own and Rob and Cassie's friendship begins to dissolve after a night of unexpected passion. After some twists and turns, it's revealed that Katy's older sister Rosalind orchestrated her murder, using a worker from the dig as her patsy. As Cassie was able to suss out, but Rob wasn't, Rosalind was a classic sociopath and had no qualms about eliminating her "uppity" little sister by using her wiles to convince a young man to do her bidding.

Rob tells us the story of working this case after the fact, which is very effective. He's gained some insight and perspective, and alludes to things he could have done differently without giving away the ending. Clues were dropped in subtly throughout the story so that the end surprised you, but didn't come out of nowhere. Had you been paying attention to the right parts, you could have put the puzzle pieces together. I think that's what makes for a great mystery. You can feel as though the author is speaking to you on your level, even if you didn't guess the outcome.

Rob's story is amazing. He has vague bits and pieces of memory of this idyllic childhood with great friends. He knows something terrible and tragic happened to the three of them, but has never been able to remember what. He was sent away to boarding school afterward and his parents moved to another town, so he's never truly had to revisit the events of the past. During the Devlin case, Rob is forced to confront the past, and he comes to terms with the enormity of what he has lost. He has been robbed of his life with Jamie and Peter, and is able to finally realize that and mourn for it.

Let's get to the frustrating part. Although Rob starts to regain some memories of his childhood while working the case (the Devlin father turns out to be a teenager that Rob knew of as a child), he never remembers what happened to Jamie and Peter.

You never find out what happened to Jamie and Peter!

I can understand why the author might have felt it would have been a cop-out to reveal what happened -- she had set up the promise of an unsolved, unsolvable mystery. But when Rob started to piece together things that he hadn't been able to remember, you naturally assume that he'll be able to figure out the events of that day. The two parallel mysteries from Rob's past and present unfold simultaneously, and when you find out what happened to Katy, you naturally assume that you'll find out what happened to Jamie and Peter. You just naturally assume that there will be some sort of pay-off at the end, and you're totally left hanging.

When Colin was about halfway through, he shared a theory with me. He thought that Peter killed Jamie and traumatized Adam on that fateful day, and now killed Katy as an adult. It killed me to not react, because I was thinking that while I enjoyed In the Woods tremendously, I want to read that book!

Quick update!

Hello, faithful readers!

It has been too long, for a couple of reasons:

1. Work has been soul-crushingly busy. 

(I know, I know. I shouldn't complain, because I have a good job with a good, GROWING company in these trying economic times. As an American, I reserve the right to complain.)

2. I loved In the Woods by Tana French so much, and read it so quickly, that Colin decided to read it. I cannot post a spoiler-free response to this one, so I purposefully held off on posting anything until he was done. I'm a good wife. 

Colin is done with In the Woods, so you can expect a post soon. I also finished a novel by the name of All Other Nights by Dara Horn, so that response is forth-coming as well. As you can see from the Currently Reading section, I'm on to my first graphic novel, Watchmen. It's new and different, and interesting -- which frankly, is just what my tired eyes need at the moment!

So even though the blog looks neglected, I am still very much enjoying the Magnolia Reads project. Please stay tuned!  

8. Columbine by Dave Cullen

On April 20, 1999 I was a senior in a suburban high school. After school let out that day, I went to my regular baby-sitting job. My two pre-teen girl charges and I had bonded over boy bands and movies like She's All That, and this afternoon started like any other. We were watching Carson Daly on MTV's Total Request Live and I vaguely remember breaking news reports about the shooting on the program – I think they had a reporter (or VJ or whatever) on the scene, and checked in with him. I can't recall if they showed music videos that day, or if they focused only on the shooting. I definitely remember footage of kids escaping.

In reading the book Columbine, it was almost shocking to realize just how little I knew about what really happened at Columbine.

Ten years later, most remember the basics: the widely accepted theory of bullied outcasts who snapped, getting revenge on jocks, Christians and minorities; the killers’ membership in the "trench coat mafia;" the existence of a hit list; and especially the story of Cassie Bernall, the girl who said "yes" when her killer asked her if she believed in God, sealing her fate.

Cullen gracefully dispels these myths and gives us a complete history of before, during and after. He is perhaps the foremost expert on the tragedy among the media, having filed his first story as a journalist nine hours after the shootings began and stayed with the story for the next ten years. The events have been pieced together from thousands of pages of police reports, home videos and journals of the killers, and countless interviews with survivors. The information Cullen has to relay is exhaustive, and yet one does not feel overwhelmed reading the book. It's engrossing, and difficult to put down and walk away from.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are exposed as shockingly normal teens, albeit ones who both suffered from mental illness. Klebold's suicidal depression left him vulnerable to the persuasion of the psychopathic Harris. Their intention was never to perpetrate a simple school shooting; a year’s worth of careful planning and preparation failed in its ultimate goal of mass murder via bombing. Cullen is able to describe their three-act plan in detail, Harris having left documentation for posterity, and it is chilling. Harris and Klebold aimed to top both the death count and long-lasting effect on the American psyche of the Oklahoma City bombing a few years earlier. Had they been successful with their explosives, more than 500 people would certainly have perished. Although Harris had published a hit list on his website, none of the people listed were killed – the intent was mass, indiscriminate murder, something infinitely harder for most to understand or accept.

The truth behind Cassie Bernall’s supposed martyrdom is particularly fascinating, an incredible example of how quickly misinformation spread and was accepted as absolute truth. So much of what we “know” about Columbine is the result of unreliable eyewitness accounts and repetitious media coverage thereof. Many of the 2,000 students in Columbine High School did not know Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold, yet their tales of bullied outcasts were immediately accepted by media outlets and reported as fact, reinforcing those students’ opinions.

The stories in this book will get to you. There was – and still is – a great deal of suffering, and Cullen does not mince words. Reading about the events of the day of the killings, I began to cry and couldn’t stop for almost an hour. Yet I could not put the book down. It’s too valuable to learn the truths of this tragedy after so many years of persistent myths.

7. Cloris by Cloris Leachman with George Englund

I wanted to read Cloris, Cloris Leachman's autobiography, for a few different reasons:

1. I love celebrity tell-alls! (Have I mentioned that?)

2. I have read and re-read the autobiography Past Imperfect by Joan Collins countless times. (It's excellent!) She describes in detail the affair she had with George Englund while he was still married to Cloris Leachman, and I wanted to read about those events from the married woman's point of view.

(Also, I was a little intrigued by the fact that the ex-husband co-wrote the book.)

3. I have heard a couple of stories about interviews with Cloris Leachman that suggest that she's at the age when she no longer cares about following publicists' orders and not offending anyone. (Did anyone else hear that she called Betty White a slut?) Yay, dish!

So how did it stack up? A complete disappointment!

In her introduction, Cloris states, "I decided it would be wrong to write my autobiography in chapters, because I didn't live my life in chapters. The long walk I've taken wasn't divided into tidy sections. It came in arcs and rainbows, sprints and marathons, clouds and clear places." Right. So she jumps around between times and topics, and it's impossible to put what she's writing about into context and gain any understanding from her experiences.

I admittedly prefer autobiographies to be written in a chronological context, and I prefer linear story-telling. I think it's somewhat arrogant to say "well, I didn't live my life in chapters, so how could I possibly write about it in chapters?" An autobiography is not a diary; it's meant to be read -- and enjoyed -- by other people. How do you expect readers to be able to follow along when you don't have an established method of story-telling? How is a reader supposed to put an event into context when they can't remember where you lived or if you had one child or two at that point? It's disorienting and defeats the purpose.

One of the problems with this approach is that I don't feel like I know very much about the events of Cloris's life. I think she has five children, and I know that at one point a son died. I don't know when exactly she and George Englund divorced or exactly why. She states more than once that she has won nine Emmy Awards, but I don't know for which nine projects. I know that she has two younger sisters, but I barely know anything about them or her relationships with them.

There was some celebrity dish (an epic night of love-making with Gene Hackman, anyone?) but not enough to really qualify as a "tell-all" or to believe she's not leaving the best stuff out. The Joan Collins affair? It rates a couple of paragraphs, but Cloris doesn't really relate how she felt about it or it affected the marriage. As far as George Englund goes, he is the love of her life and she of his and end of story. They are great friends and what does it matter that they see other people? That was frustrating, as I really don't understand it or relate to it. Open up a little more and tell me about it, and maybe I'll be able to see where you're coming from. Isn't that the point?

I don't recommend this book. It's not worth the amount of time it takes to read it -- and it does take a bit longer than one might expect because of the writing style. Cloris interrupts herself to go on tangents about other topics throughout, and at best is just rambling.

Instead, watch this clip of Cloris on Chelsea Lately. It will take much less time and give you an idea of how the book goes.

BBC Book Survey

I saw this on Facebook, and wanted to post my answers here since it relates to my Magnolia Reads project. Apparently, the BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. How do my reading habits stack up? Books that I have read are in bold.

1 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
11 Little Women by Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong by Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch by George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House by Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
34 Emma by Jane Austen
35 Persuasion by Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
41 Animal Farm by George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving
45 The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
50 Atonement by Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi by Yann Martel
52 Dune by Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
62 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History by Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road by Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick by Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
72 Dracula by Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses by James Joyce
76 The Inferno by Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal by Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession by AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web by EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
94 Watership Down by Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet by William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

6. Austenland by Shannon Hale

When I started my current job years ago (2003, to be exact), I made quick friends with another girl in the office named Sarah. We bonded over Desperate Housewives, the constant ridiculousness of co-workers, and our love of reading. As I recall, she even tried to recruit me to watch Arrested Development when it first came on. Great girl, Sarah. Always looking out for me. A lot has happened since we first met: We both left the company (although I came back after about a year), we both got married, and she now has two beautiful children (who I would love to meet someday!). Facebook helps us keep in touch, and when I posted a status asking for book suggestions, she left a comment saying that I had to read Austenland. Knowing Sarah, I put it down on my list without a second thought.

I don't know if this will surprise anyone, but I'm not a big Austen fan. I read Emma about 12 years ago, and my sister Mollie helped me place the characters in the context of Clueless. Mollie actually just recommended that I read Pride & Prejudice this year, so maybe I will become an Austen person. Maybe. Anyway, I don't think my lack of Austen awareness had much effect on my enjoyment of this novel. This is the story of Jane, a thirty-something singleton who has been burned by romance too many times. She finds herself relying more and more heavily on the fiction of Jane Austen, to the point that she's not sure any man can live up to her fantasy. A relative bequeaths Jane an all expenses paid vacation to a resort that transports you to 1816. Three weeks of living in Austen's time? Jane is unsure if this vacation will help or hurt her, but in the end cannot resist.

I really loved this book. It's very well-constructed, giving you bits of Jane's romantic history throughout as well as insight into her relationship with her mother -- all of which could reasonably be expected to lead to Jane's current predicament. You empathize with Jane, as she struggles between indulging her fantasy and trying to break herself of it. The writing is exceptional. Hale takes a quirky concept and makes it very relatable, and keeps the pace and tone lively. This is a quick read at under 200 pages, and definitely worth your time. I highly recommend it!