Three Heart Warming Stories

Just in time for Valentine's Day, here are three heart warming stories to take the chill off a New England winter.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevon.

A.J. Fikry, owner of  Island Books, has had a sad life.  His wife has died.  He is subject to seizures.  As the owner on an independent bookstore, he is experiencing sluggish sales.  Lastly, his personal volume of Edgar Allen Poe's rare poetry has been stolen.  However, A. J.'s life is about to be turned upside down.   A mysterious package arrives in his bookstore giving him a second chance at life and love.  For book lovers everywhere, this gently story of second chances will bring a smile to your face and tear to your eye.  As the sign on A.J.'s bookstore says, "No man is an island; every book is a world."

The Handsome Man's De Luxe Cafe by Alexander McCall Smith

In Gabarone, Botswana, Precious Ramotswe, the owner of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, has soled many crimes in her career.  However, her latest case, that of a woman who has no memory, may be her most challenging.  In addition,  the redoubtable Grace Makutsi has decided to open a restaurant, a business about which she knows nothing.  Mma Ramotswe's husband, the reliable and honorable Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, owner of the Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, has the unenviable task of laying off one of his mechanics due to the economic slowdown.  It is up to Mma Ramotswwe and her friend, Mma Potokwane, the formidable matron of the Orphan Farm, to see that justice is served and the balance of life is restored.

The Rosie Effect  by Graeme Simsion

In The Rosie Project, brilliant genetics professor Don Tillman found the love of his life, Rosie Jarman,a woman with whom he is completely incompatible.  In this charming sequel, Don and Rosie are living in New York and find out that "they" are unexpectedly  pregnant. Balancing the needs of each other, research, careers, medical studies, impending baby and friends might be too much stress for Don and Rosie's marriage.  Don and Rosie discover for themselves that love cannot always be expressed in a spread sheet.  Fans of "The big Bang Theory" will delight in this tale of geeks, love and compatibility.

Still alive and reading

Wow!  I have been really negligent about posting my reading lists.  The holidays kept me busy.

However, I have all sorts of books to recommend,

I finally got my hands on Anthony Doerr's All the Light we Cannot See which is a fabulous read.  If you liked The Monuments Men or The Book Thief, you can add this one to your list.  If you did not read either of those selections, add this one to your list.  It is a touching story of a father's love for his blind daughter.  He creates a model of their town so that she can navigate her way safely. He also harbors a secret which could prove deadly to both father and daughter.  Across Europe in Germany, a young boy who is a prodigy in math and electronics listens to a faraway radio broadcast from France.  The boy, unfortunately, get swept up in the Nazi war machine.  Doer brings these two characters together in a heart-wrenching climax.

Give yourself some time to read this book.  There is a great deal of science in the story, algebra, electronics, marine biology and engineering.

Art Imitates Life

With all due respect to two of my favorite authors, the late Tom Clancy and Daniel Silva, I am noticing an unsettling pattern.  Tom Clancy's last novel, Command Authority co-authored with Mark Greaney is a Clancy blockbuster with weapons, action, espionage, and human drama.   It links now President Jack Ryan with his son Jack Jr. when a current nasty situation has its roots in Ryan's past.
It is a great read with lots of detail about weapons systems (OK  We paid for this stuff with our tax dollars.  We might as well be familiar with them) and enough action to leave you breathless.  The setting is Ukraine with Russia's current incursion into Crimea.  The scary part part is how plausible the plot is!
Next, Daniel Silva does a similar plot line with his spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon in The Heist.
Again, it is a great read with lots of action.  The setting is present day Syria with its current destabilization and refugee situation.  Once again, it is a great read, but a little too close to reality for comfort.

The Spy I Used to Love

When Tom Clancy's first novel The Hunt for Red October first burst upon the literacy scene, I stayed up all night reading it.  Year after year, I devoured his subsequent novels and followed the careers of the fictional characters Jack Ryan, John Clark and Diego Chavez.After Tom Clancy's passing last year, Mark Greaney continued the Jack Ryan series with the next generation of spies in the Ryan family.  While Jack Ryan Support and Defend, published this year, has all the action, technology, and government duplicity of a Ton Clancy novel,  I still miss Jack Ryan.  I know it is a current trend to keep pushing after an author has passed on, but it doesn't always work.  I miss the old Jack Ryan.  I miss the USSR - the enemy we loved to hate and I really miss a simpler world order.

MccEwan - The Children Act

I love courtroom drama. It is a holdover from my years of working in the courthouse in Virginia.  Best-selling author Ian McEwan  (Sweet Tooth, Atonment) has created another moving and controversial book.  Fiana Maye, a high court judge in Britain's Family Court has had her share of high stakes cases.  Sworn to uphold the law, she has rendered decisions in cases involving the separation of Siamese Twins, child kidnapping by a non-custodial parent and the usual divorces, child custody and protective orders.  However, as her own marriage is unraveling, she is unprepared for the emotional involvement in another controversial cases involving a young cancer patient who is refusing a live saving blood transfusion due to his religious convictions. I would not say that this book is uplifting, but the writing is exceptional.

Worthy Brown's Daughter

For fans of the legal thriller and courtroom drama, Philllip Margolin brings us something very unique.  Based on actual events, Worthy Brown's Daughter is an historical fiction set in Oregon on the eve of the Civil War.  Worthy Brown is a slave brought to Oregon which prohibits slavery.  He negotiates a deal with with his master that he will be free after a year of  unpaid work. His unscrupulous master agrees to free Worthy Brown, but keeps Worthy's daughter. Worthy proceeds to hire an attorney to sue in court for his daughter's freedom. Reminiscent of Dredd Scott, Margolin puts forth the Constitutional issues of whether or not a slave can sue for freedom after being transported to a a state that has outlawed slavery. That being said, can  he sue in a court of law when he has no legal rights?  The courtroom drama and the image of frontier justice will keep you focused until the last page.
Sometimes, the practice of law is about torts, mergers and acquisitions.  Sometimes, it is about justice.

Let's talk about race.

Race is often the proverbial elephant in the room among educated Americans.  We have a President who is a man of color, yet we had another unfortunate shooting of a black teenager  in Missouri. It seems we can talk about anything in this country except race.  It took an author from Nigeria - Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche to talk about race and how we see ourselves and other.
Adiche who is from Nigeria brings us Americanah, a love story, but a really effective book about race.  Her heroine, an educated, attractive, middle class young woman from Nigeria comes to the Unites States where she discovers that she is black. Told through a series of blog entries, our heroine Ifemelu relates the perceptions of Americans toward blacks, towards immigrants, towards Africans, towards anyone from a Third World Country. Do we see the person or the color? Which African country do you come from? Do you have schools there? How nice that you speak English! Why don't you straighten your hair?
Americanah is never preachy or judgmental.  It is, however, a good beginning for a meaningful dialog about race. And, by the way, it is a love story between two individuals for each other and for their homeland.