"Museum of Innocence" by Orhan Pamuk

The Washington Post - Marie Arana

As familiar as the subject of love might seem, The Museum of Innocence is a startling original. Every turn in the story seems fresh, disquieting, utterly unexpected…The genius of Pamuk's novel is that although it can be read as a simple romance, it is a richly complicated work with subtle and intricate layers. Kemal's descent into love's hell takes him through every level of the social order, past countless neighborhoods of sprawling Istanbul, in a story that spans 30 years…In sum, The Museum of Innocence is a deeply human and humane story. Masterfully translated, spellbindingly told, it is resounding confirmation that Orhan Pamuk is one of the great novelists of his generation. With this book, he literally puts love into our hands.

"The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein

From Publishers Weekly:

If you've ever wondered what your dog is thinking, Stein's third novel offers an answer. Enzo is a lab terrier mix plucked from a farm outside Seattle to ride shotgun with race car driver Denny Swift as he pursues success on the track and off. Denny meets and marries Eve, has a daughter, Zoe, and risks his savings and his life to make it on the professional racing circuit. Enzo, frustrated by his inability to speak and his lack of opposable thumbs, watches Denny's old racing videos, coins koanlike aphorisms that apply to both driving and life, and hopes for the day when is life as a dog will be over and he can be reborn a main. When Denny hits an extended rough patch, Enzo remains his most steadfast if silent supporter. Enzo is a reliable companion and a likable enough narrator, thought the string of Denny's bad luck stories strains believability. Much like Denny, however, Stein is able to salvage some dignity from the over-the-top drama.

"The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver

From Publishers Weekly:

Kingsolver's ambitious new novel, her first in nine years (after The Poisonwood Bible), focuses on Harrison William Shepherd, the product of a divorced American father and a Mexican mother. After getting kicked out of his American military academy, Harrison spends his formative years in Mexico in the 1930's in the household of Diego Rivera; his wife, Frida Kahlo; and their houseguest, Leon Trotsky, who is hiding from Soviet assassins. After Trotsky is assassinated, Harrison returns to the U.S., settling in Asheville, N.C., where he becomes an author of historical potboilers (e.g. Vassals of Majesty) and is later investigated as a possible subversive. Narrated in the form of letters, diary entries and newspaper clippings, the novel takes a while to get going, but once it does, it achieves a rare dramatic power that reaches its emotional peak when Harrison wittily and eloquently defends himself before the House Un-American Activities Committee (on the panel is a young Dick Nixon). Employed by the American imagination, is how one character describes Harrison, a term that could apply equally to Kingsolver as she masterfully resurrects a dark period in American history with the assured hand on a true literary artist.

"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.