Promised Land by Robert B. Parker

When I came to work at the library in 2005, I had never read a Robert B. Parker novel. (I know, amazing that they hired me, isn't it?)  But the constant exposure to the latest bestsellers has broadened my reading selections considerably.  I have read everything he has written - in all four series - since 2005.  With the recent news of Mr. Parker's death, I mourned the loss of such a talent, and especially of my favorite gumshoe, Spenser.   

By the luck of the draw, I needed to pick a book from the library's Mystery Section, Shelf 30 in order to complete the Take-A-Chance Challenge.  Be still my heart! - an entire shelf of Robert Parker novels.  I opted to look for the oldest one and learn how Spenser began.  That turned out to be Promised Land, published in 1976 and No. 5 in the series.  What a hoot!  On page one I discovered this gem: "He had on a pale green leisure suit and a yellow shirt with long pointed collar, open at the neck and spilling onto the lapels of the suit,"  and I knew this story was going to be a "blast from the past".  1976 was the year of our first date - the prom, to which Dave wore a powder blue leisure suit and a shirt with a long pointed collar.  Sorry folks.  I searched for a picture of us to show you what fashion icons we were, but no luck.  However, for those of you too young to remember 1970's apparel, his suit (not to mention his hair) looked something like this:

 
Between giggles at the dated clothing styles and slang, I learned a lot about Spenser.  Sometimes when an author writes a series around a character, it feels like nothing more than a convenience for the author - no need to create new characters, background or surroundings - and there is no growth.  However, Spenser and his crew have evolved.   It's not necessarily a real-time aging - Spenser and Susan were approximately age forty in 1976 (based on references to "middle age" and that Spenser and Hawk had boxed together twenty years earlier) and they appear to have aged no more than 10-15 years in the thirty-four years since then - but it is a discernable development of their relationships, experience and maturity.

Mr. Parker's writing has become more sparse over the years - and he wasn't overly-wordy to begin with - which is one of the things I love about his books.  He manages to convey feelings, attitudes and situations with a minimum of extraneous details, yet even jumping into the series somewhere around book #33 as I did, I never felt cheated or lost.  As I sit here trying to explain this amazing ability, I realize that if I could grasp it I would be the one with 45 bestselling books, so you'll have to discover it and dissect it on your own.

This book marked the end of my reading for the Take-A-Chance Challenge here at the library (with 5 weeks to spare!) but it won't be the end of my journey with Spenser.  My plan is start at the beginning and make my way through the entire series.  I'll keep you posted.

Vanish by Tess Gerritsen

A nameless, beautiful woman appears to be just another corpse in the morgue. An apparent suicide, she lies on a gurney, awaiting the dissecting scalpel of medical examiner Maura Isles. But when Maura unzips the body bag and looks down at the body, she gets the fright of her life. The corpse opens its eyes. Very much alive, the woman is rushed to the hospital, where with shockingly cool precision, she murders a security guard and seizes hostages . . . one of them a pregnant patient, Jane Rizzoli.

The story alternates between the past (a group of Soviet girls brought to the U.S. and forced into prostitution) and the present (a hostage situation in a hospital).  The two plots eventually mesh together with lots of turns and surprises.  My standard for a thriller rates three areas: pace, predictability and gore.  Vanish rates well in all three categories.  The action moves fast, keeps you guessing and, although there is considerable bloodshed and violence, it isn't graphic.

This was my first Gerritsen book and, In usual fashion, I jumped into the middle of the series.  In this instance, it may have helped to start at the beginning and have more background on Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles.  Jane, especially, came across very superficially, so I think the previous four novels would have been a big help.  I would rate this one a 4 out of 5 and I plan to catch up on this series.

Gerritsen was my random author for the Take a Chance Challenge at my library.

Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

Julie Powell is 30 years old, living in a tiny apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that's going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother's worn, dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes -- in the span of one year.

I hate to admit it, but I picked up the audio version of this book mostly because everything else I wanted to listen to was checked out and I needed an audio in my car.  I had heard bits and pieces about the story, listened to a friend rave over the movie, and the cover is so pretty that I decided to give it a shot.  And I'm so glad I did.

Although I've never worked temp-jobs or lived in New York, I felt a sort of kinship with Julie and her desire for "something" that she couldn't quite name.  My personal opinion is that we are all made in God's image, therefore - since God is the Creator - we all have an innate desire to be creative.  That's what I think Julie was looking for - her creative outlet.  She found it in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  I love that her copy of the book had been her mother's and she had memories of it open on the counter as her mother cooked.

It's possible that my rapport with Julie was partially because of her occasionally inept cooking skills.  I love, love, love to cook and bake, and have been known to conduct my own cooking show when alone in my tiny kitchen.  However, truth be told, my family has eaten a number of things that didn't turn out exactly as expected, so I cried and cheered along with Julie's kitchen tragedies and triumphs. 

Julie's creativity also took her into the, at that time, new world of blogging. Through her interaction with her "bleeders" (blog readers) as she calls them, I felt another tie to Julie - both as a blogger who couldn't believe anyone would take the time to read what she wrote and as one of her fans who wanted to join the chant of "don't give up".  You can still read the Julie/Julia Project here.

I still haven't watched the movie - mostly because, now that I enjoyed the book so much, I'm afraid the movie will be a let down - but I did get my own copy of Julia Child's cookbook and have attempted a bit of French cooking.  No way am I trying aspic or anything involving bone marrow, but Julie has given me the courage to experiment a bit [family cringes].

My most recent creation was pate a choux with creme patisserie - which, coincidentally, is nearly identical to what my mother has been making for years and calls cream puffs with vanilla pudding.  No wonder I'm so drawn to this book - it's a family thing.

This book was my non-fiction selection for the Take a Chance challenge at my library.

Dave Takes-A-Chance

We have been participating in the Take-A-Chance Challenge at the library where I (Tami) work.  Below are Dave's wrap-ups of a couple of his challenge books.  The first one is from the "Random Book" challenge in which patrons draw a number corresponding to a specific shelf in the library and must read one book on that shelf.

First, I need to whine just a little bit about my Random Book location. I drew “General Fiction”, shelf 75. When I looked at my section I found 28 books on this shelf.  Twenty-two them were Victorian Romances; thanks, but no. I guess that’s the proverbial “luck of the draw”.  That left me with a selection of 6 books from which to pick.  Two of them looked as palatable as a Victorian Romance, so I narrowed it down to the final four.  Fortunately, the first two books of Jeffrey Lindsay’s Dexter series made this final cut so I selected the first of these, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, as my random location book.

 Dexter is an interesting character, described as an “enjoyable sociopath”.  He is.  Dexter is a "blood splatter specialist" with the Miami Police Dept and sees himself as something other than human because when the moon is full his “dark passenger” (the voice in his head) leads him to become a serial killer who tortures his victims. Fortunately, he kills only those who really deserve killing and he convinces the reader that he chooses his victims wisely.

Dexter is certainly not for everyone because of the subject matter and it gets a little graphic but I think I will read the second in this series just to see what he does next.

The next challenge was "Get The Facts" - participants must read the non-fiction book of their choice.  Dave heard this author speak at a men's retreat and was impressed enough to purchase a couple of his books.

I finally finished my first Challenge book. I read Blood Covenant, by Michael Franzese. It was a very interesting story about his life, first as a high-ranking member of La Cosa Nostra (the Mob) and later, his second blood covenant when he was baptized and began a new life of service to God. Most of the book was about the mafia and was very informative and interesting. Then he was able to draw some parallels between total commitment to the mob and total commitment to Christ. Blood Covenant will probably appeal more to men than women but it has some very good messages.

For more information on this author, visit www.michaelfranzese.com/

The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald

I received an advance copy of this fascinating book in an on-line drawing (Thanks Random House!) and loved the bright yellow cover and the line-up of ladies in 50's-style garb, so I chose it as my "Pick a Book by It's Cover" entry in the Take-a-Chance Challenge at the library where I work. Henry House is one of a string of orphaned babies raised in a "practice house" as part of a college home economics program. The fact that these houses actually existed fifty years ago to help teach young ladies the fine art of housekeeping and childrearing adds a whole other level of fascination to an already compelling story.

We follow Henry from his arrival at the house as an infant, through adolescence and into adult-hood as he struggles to form attachments after being raised to believe that people, including mothers, are interchangeable and temporary. Henry also wrestles with choices -after all he was taught to love and treat all his mothers equally; to never pick one thing or person above another.

The pop culture references as the story moves through the 50's and 60's are fun and add depth to the narritive. We even get a glimpse behind the scenes in the world of Disney animation. Unfortunately, the cover art I liked so much will be replaced with this more mundane cover when the hardcover edition is published in March 2010, but the story will still be unique. I recommend you add this one to your TBR stack for the new year.

Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Travers

"A riveting courtroom drama of rape and premeditated murder. Pits a humble small-town lawyer against a hard-headed big-city prosecutor. Emotions flare as a jealous army lieutenant pleads innocent to murdering the rapist of his seductive, beautiful wife. Packed with drama, passion and intrigue." Sounds like something John Grisham wrote, doesn't it? But this bestseller was from 1958 and was penned by Robert Travers, which is actually the pseudonym for Michigan attorney, prosecutor and judge John D. Voelker. The story is based on an actual murder case in which Voelker served as the defense attorney. We read this book together to fulfill Dave's "Random Author" selection in the Take-a-Chance Challenge. For the most part, we agreed with the description above. The contrast between the small-town lawyer and the big-city prosecutor constantly reminded us of "A Time to Kill", right down to the older, hard-drinking, retired lawyer co-conspirator. Unfortunately, Mr. Travers could take a lesson from Grisham in brevity and pacing. This story tended to get bogged down in legalese and unnecessary detail, the "red herrings" tended to be more pointless distractions than intriguing false leads, and there were a couple of points that were never clearly explained. Surprisingly the story is still timely for today, including the conflict between the military and civilian factions of the town. We had fun with the outdated idioms and the changes in moral standards - the army officer's wife was accused of being promiscuous because she took off her shoes in public. We also were fascinated with the discussion of psychiatry as a new and, perhaps, unreliable branch of medicine. There was an unexpected amount of humor in the story which kept us from skimming over the wordy, rambling sections for fear of missing a great one-liner. The ending had enough surprise to make it satisfying and an over-all enjoyable read. We would give it 3 stars - point off for endless blabbering and point off for predictability. This evening's plan is to watch the movie version starring Jimmy Stewart, George C. Scott and Lee Remick. We'll let you know how the two compare.

Update: Once again, the book is better than the movie - and it honestly surprised us this time. Since we weren't overwhelmed with the book, and the movie featured an all-star lineup, we really thought there was a chance for the movie to outdo the book. We also hoped it might even clarify a couple of points we didn't follow in the book, but those points must have confused the script writers too, because they either left them out or changed the story. The story was mostly in tact, but it lacked the complexity and detail of the book. Had we watched the movie first we probably would have enjoyed it more but, as usually happens, once you've read the book the movie just doesn't measure up.

Who Killed the Robins Family?

Eight chapters + eight family members + eight murders + zero solutions = great fun! Throw in a few references to classic mystery stories and you've got a hit. This book was my (Tami's) selection for the Random Bestseller portion of the Take-a-Chance Challenge. A bestseller in 1983 - this book was originally published without a solution and a $10,000 prize was offered for the reader who submitted the most nearly correct response to who, what, when, where, why and how for each of the 8 murders. The paperback version, published in 1984, contained the answers. Dave and I read this together and had some great discussions trying to decipher the who-dun-its. M*A*S*H fans who remember "The Rooster Crowed at Midnight" will have a comical, but accurate, vision of our analysis - "It couldn't have been the butler. At the time of the murder he was locked in the closet with Mrs. White." I can't say we would have won the $10,000, but we were surprisingly close on a lot of the details. An entertaining read for fans of Agatha Christie (like Tami) or conspiracy theories (like Dave). This book may be the basis for a future contest/reading program at the library - stay tuned.

Library Challenge

The library where I work is sponsoring the Take-A-Chance Challenge. Six challenges to be completed in six months. You can find all the details at http://www.takeachancechallenge.blogspot.com/ but basically the categories are: 1. Random library location 2. Random word (must be in title of book) 3. Random author 4. Random year - read a bestseller 5. Judge a book by it's cover 6. Read a non-fiction book We will be posting our choices in the challenge and our thoughts and opinions as we read. Jennifer (http://findyournextbookhere.blogspot.com/ and http://mrsfligs.blogspot.com/) was the creator of the first Take-A-Chance Challenge, so visit Jenn to see the orignal or for permission to host your own challenge.