"The Whistling Season" by Ivan Doig

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Doig's latest foray through Montana history begins in the late 1950s, with Superintendent of Public Instruction Paul Milliron on the verge of announcing the closure of the state's one-room schools, seen as hopelessly out of date in the age of Sputnik. But quickly the narrative takes us back to Paul's pivotal seventh-grade year, 1910, when he was a student in one of those one-room schools, and two landmark events took place: the Milliron family acquired a housekeeper, and Halley's comet came to Montana. Throughout his long career, Doig has been at his best when chronicling the passing of a season in the lives of a Montana family, usually farmers at around the turn of the century. It's no surprise, then, that this is his best novel since the marvelous English Creek (1985). As in all of his books, he digs the details of his historical moments from the dirt in which they thrived. We see Paul, his father, and his two younger brothers struggling to make a life on their dryland farm in the wake of their mother's death, and we feel their shock when they lay eyes on their new housekeeper, a recent widow who looks nothing like the "great-bosomed creature shrouded in gray" they had come to expect. The saga of how this stranger from Minneapolis and her brother (soon to become the new teacher) change lives in unexpected ways has all the charm of old-school storytelling, from Dickens to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Doig's antique narrative voice, which sometimes jars, feels right at home here, coming from the mouth of the young Paul, who is eagerly learning Latin as he tries to make sense of his ever-enlarging world. An entrancing new chapter in the literature of the West. Bill Ott

Be sure and read the sequel "Work Song" to learn more about the characters from "The Whistling Season."

2010 Reading List

Here is the list of books we read in 2010 for your enjoyment:








January: Digging to America, Anne Tyler
February: Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America, Bill Bryson
March: Zorro, Isabel Allende
April: Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
May: My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme
June: Outliers, the Story of Success, Malcolm Galdwell
July:The Eight, Katherine Neville
August:The Help, Kathryn Stockett
September: Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky
October: Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
November: The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
December: The Vintage Caper, Peter Mayle

"Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading-- that is a good life."

---Annie Dillard from "The Writing Life"

"The Vintage Caper" by Peter Mayle

From Hollywood to Marseille with delicious stops in between, Peter Mayle's latest novel is filled with the culinary delights and entertaining characters that make him our treasured chronicler of French food and life.

The story begins high above Los Angeles at the impressive wine cellar of lawyer Danny Roth. Unfortunately, after inviting the Los Angeles Times to write an extensive profile extolling the liquid treasures of his collection, Roth finds himself the victim of a world-class wine heist. Enter Sam Levitt, former lawyer and wine connoisseur, who follows leads to Bordeaux and Provence. The unraveling of the ingenious crime is threaded through with Mayle's seductive rendering of France's sensory delights-- even the most sophisticated of oenophiles will learn a thing or two from this vintage work by a beloved author. (From the Publisher)

"The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga

From "The New Yorker:" In this darkly comic debut novel (winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize) set in India, Balram, a chauffeur, murders his employer, justifying his crime as the act of a "social entrepreneur." In a series of letters to the Premier of China... the chauffeur recounts his transformation from an honest, hardworking boy growing up in "the Darkness"... to a determined killer. He places the blame for his rage squarely on the avarice of the Indian elite, among whom bribes are commonplace, and who perpetuate a system in which many are sacrificed to the whims of the few. Adiga's message isn't subtle or novel, but Balram's appealingly sardonic voice and acute observations of the social order are both winning and unsettling.

"Cutting for Stone" by Abraham Verghese

The Washington Post - W. Ralph Eubanks
Even with its many stories and layers, Cutting for Stone remains clear and concise. Verghese paints a vivid picture of these settings, the practice of medicine (he is also a physician) and the characters' inner conflicts. I felt as though I were with these people, eating dinner with them even, feeling the hot spongy injera on my fingers as they dipped it into a spicy wot. In The Interior Castle, Saint Teresa's work on mystical theology, she wrote, "I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions." Cutting for Stone shines like that place.

"Suite Francaise" by Irene Nemirovsky

Editorial Reviews -
Suite Francaise
From Barnes & Noble
With these two novellas, Holocaust victim Irène Némirovsky accomplished the daunting task of translating the unspeakable horror and chaos of war -- at the precise moment it was exploding all around her -- into luminous, coherent, and masterfully crafted fiction. Conceived by the author as two parts in a series, the stories of Suite Française were preserved by Némirovsky's daughters after the author was deported to Auschwitz in 1942. A literary treasure of enormous magnitude, these powerful tales of grace and disgrace in the midst of crisis have, at last, found a grateful audience.

"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

From www.bookbrowse.com:
Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women — mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends — view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.