The Heart Broke In

The Heart Broke In (2012) by James Meek. Ritchie Shepherd, an aging pop star and producer of a reality show for teen talent, is cheating on his wife with a sixteen-year-old girl. His beautiful sister, Bec, is getting close to discovering a cure for malaria. Val Oatman, the editor of a powerful tabloid newspaper, is in love with Bec and wants to marry her. Alex, a gene therapist (and former drummer with Ritchie's band) thinks he  might actually have discovered a cure for aging. He, too, is in love with Bec and thinks he might marry her. The various characters are interwoven in a complex plot that provides hours of entertainment for the reader, and a satisfying conclusion that wraps up the novel nicely. This is a very well written book, with many incisive insights into human nature and the characters that populate it. I enjoyed it immensely. Grade: A- 

The Art Forger

The Art Forger (2013) by B.A. Shapiro. Anyone with an interest in art, especially in Degas, should get a kick out of this book. It tells the story of Claire Roth, a young artist who is hired by a powerful gallery owner to copy what he believes to be a stolen Degas -- although Roth is convinced that it is a forgery. Shapiro knows her Degas, and she convinced me that she knows a good deal about art forgery. The book interweaves history with fiction to produce a fascinating look at the world of artists, galleries, and collectors of art. I would recommend it to anyone with a curious mind and even the slightest interest in art. Grade: B+ 

Heads in Beds

Heads in Beds (2013) by Jacob Tomsky. The subtitle to this book is A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality. That pretty well describes it. Tomsky adopts a very casual, street-wise voice in telling us about his career in the hotel business, and he tells all -- or almost all. He tells you what to do and what not to do when you check in to a hotel, who to tip and how to tip to get what you want. It's a very interesting book, and it has the ring of truth to it. This guy has really been there, and what he's offering is the straight dope. He tells you how to get free stuff from the minibar, how to get free movies on the room's TV, and many other valuable tips. This book is a valuable and entertaining read, and I would recommend it to anyone who might be staying in a hotel in the foreseeable future. Grade: B+ 

Ike's Bluff

Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World (2012) by Evan Thomas. Anyone interested in recent American history should enjoy this book. Thomas has thoroughly researched his subject, and through this  partial biography we come to feel that we know Eisenhower better. The book focuses on the eight years, from 1953 to 1961, that Ike served as president. Thomas really humanizes the president, telling us about Ike's struggle to control his temper, about the difference between the public and the private man, and about the toll the presidency took on Eisenhower's health. The bluff of the title is a play on Ike's prowess as a poker player (he had to quit playing poker because he kept cleaning out his fellow officers). But as president, Ike bluffed the Soviet Union, convincing them that he was ready and willing to use nuclear weapons, when in fact he did everything he could to keep the U.S. out of war, and might not have used nukes even if we got in a war. The only drawback to this book is that Thomas never really got inside the head of the former president. Crucial to Ike's bluff was that no one should know whether he was really willing to launch a massive attack on our enemies, and he kept it that way, even to his wife and children. I found this a most enjoyable book, even though in the end Ike remains something of an enigma. Grade: A-  

The Round House

The Round House (2013) by Louise Erdrich. Set in the 1980s on an Indian reservation in North Dakota, this is a book about justice and about a 13-year-old Ojibwe boy who seeks said justice for his mother, who has been sexually assaulted in a tribal building known as the Round House. As it works out, she was assaulted by a white man, who appears virtually immune from prosecution due to laws governing native American justice. But Joe, the Ojibwe boy, and his friends do some investigating on their own, and they are soon sure they know who perpetrated the heinous crime. They can't find justice through the legal system, so they seek their own kind of rough justice -- at great emotional cost to themselves. This is an excellent book, which gets inside the mind of a 13-year-old boy and the legal barriers faced by native Americans. It deserves to be read by a wide audience. Grade: A- 

May We Be Forgiven

May We Be Forgiven (2012) by A.M. Homes. Harold Silver, the  protagonist of the book, has spent a lifetime watching his younger brother, George, succeed on a grand scale while he, Harold, has struggled. Then, one fateful night, Harold sleeps with George's wife, Jane. When George catches them in bed together, his rage is directed at Jane, whom he proceeds to bash on the head with a lamp, killing her. This book is all about the year following that fateful night, and how Harold ends up in charge of George's affairs, and George's two children. It's a wild, raucous ride of a book, with outlandish event following outlandish event until the reader is apt to be quite overwhelmed. It never fails to be entertaining, however, and it ends on a nice grace note. Grade: B

A Working Theory of Love

A Working Theory of Love (2012) by Scott Hutchins. This is a surprisingly disappointing book that has interesting ideas behind it and takes place in a beautiful setting, but just doesn't deliver. Neill Bassett, the protagonist, is a man with a business degree who is recruited to help develop a computer that will pass the Turing test -- i.e., that will simulate human conversation so convincingly as to be taken for a person. Much of the book is taken up by "conversations" between Bassett and the artificial intelligence that he is training; the rest of the book is made up of Bassett's wanderings in the world of romance, where he falls in love with a girl named Rachel. The setting is the San Francisco Bay Area, certainly one of the  most beautiful settings in the United States. But it all failed to come together for me. None of the relationships seemed to develop in a natural or believable fashion, and there were strange leaps in meaning that I could make no sense of. This doesn't, of course, mean that this was a bad book -- just that I didn't "get it." Grade: B-

The End of Your Life Book Club

The End of Your Life Book Club (2013) by Will Schwalbe. This is a true story about the author and his mother, who had a special relationship until her recent death from pancreatic cancer. What they talked about, more than anything, was books. Their interests were wide-ranging, and I got more than one idea for a book I'd like to read from this memoir. More than a discussion of books, however, this book is a memorial to Schwalbe's mother, who was a humanitarian and philanthropist with few equals. Apparently the family was blessed with money, because she gets the finest of medical care and the issue of whether they can afford something never comes up. Schwalbe meets with his mother on numerous occasions; as she bravely faces her battle with cancer, he is often there for her chemotherapy treatments and other procedures. When they get together, they discuss books. And, as often as not, they suggest books for each other. Thus, they form their own little "book club" of two people (remarkably, his mother keeps reading right up until the end). This book is a beautiful tribute of a son to his mother, and a fascinating read for the lucky reader who picks it up. Grade: A

The Raven Boys

The Raven Boys (2012) by Maggie Stiefvater. This book is targeted at the "young adult" Fantasy audience, and thus it was not for me that it was written. No surprise, then, that I did not like it. It involves magic, and something called "ley lines" (lines of magical force on the Earth's surface), and ghosts. There's a young girl named Blue who amplifies the psychoactive powers of those around her, and a group of high-school boys from a nearby private school (the Raven boys) who are seeking the tomb of an ancient king. I found it all rather silly and nonsensical, and only kept reading because I didn't have another book to read. I also found the writing sub-par and the characterizations less than convincing. In other words, Grade: C 

Dreamland

Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep (2012) by David K. Randall. The author does his best to make the science of sleep interesting and mysterious, but I couldn't help but feel that I'd heard or read most of this material elsewhere already. The book is well researched and well written, but I just wasn't blown away. Grade: B

The Life of Objects

The Life of Objects (2012) by Susanna Moore. In 1938, seventeen-year-old Beatrice, an Irish Protestant lace maker, finds herself in fairy-tale territory as she is whisked away from her humdrum existence to live with an aristocratic family near Berlin. It is Beatrice's fate to live through the years of World War II as a member of a German household, facing hunger and illness, the grave threats of Nazi terror, and the collapse of civilization as a horde of refugees from the advancing Russian armies overwhelm the resources of her hosts. This is a well told tale, in all its gruesome details, and makes a strong impression that will not soon leave the reader. Grade: A

Sutton

Sutton (2012) by J. R. Moehringer. Willie Sutton, famous Depression-era bank robber, is the subject of this book. It's not really non-fiction, though, because remarkably little is known about Sutton's real life and times. He granted only one interview, after being released from prison in 1969, and that interview is cursory, with several errors (or lies). Moehringer in this book makes his best guess as to what Sutton's life was really like, and what Sutton was really like. It may not be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but it is an immensely entertaining novel. Sutton's career as a criminal is the stuff of legends, and in this book Moehringer brings one possible version of the legend to vivid life. Grade: A-