Swimming by Nicola Keegan

I know this book has been around for a year or two, but I'm just now getting around to reading it.  I'm glad I did, because it took me to a new world, into the rarefied air of an Olympic gold medalist.  I like a book that takes me someplace new.  Here is a quote from Publisher's Weekly:



Keegan takes on death, religion, relationships and coming-of-age in her gorgeously stylized and irreverent debut about a rising Olympic swimming star. Not even a year after Philomena "Pip" Ash is born in 1960s Middle America, her parents put their rambunctious infant in a pool and watch the remarkable sight of a nine-month-old gliding through the water. With some help from Olympic Supercoach Ernest K. Mankovitz, Pip becomes a mercenary swimming machine who wins an unprecedented collection of gold medals in three Olympic games. Though Pip's connection with water is preternaturally intense, she can't relate to people, a dilemma heightened by early encounters with death and her innate awareness of loathsome pain and insecurities. After going through a premature career climax and the subsequent plummet, Pip is forced to deal with emotions she's spent her life ignoring; her sarcastic (and f-bomb laden) musings provide many amusing turns, while Keegan's linguistic playfulness moves the story at a fast clip, even if it sometimes muddles what's going on—particularly toward the end. This is worth reading for the prose alone.
 
Some of the language seemed a bit clipped and narcissistic at times, until the story moved along and I realized that Pip did try to do what she could.  She had issues of her own to deal with and after all, the young ARE narcissistic.  I imagine that is really the case with extreme athletes also, and compared to most, maybe Pip is just trying to do her best in life, as we all are.  Something different and entertaining, for me anyway.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

There was a buzz around this book when it came out last winter, and now that I've listened to it, I can see why.  The audio voice of the main character "Little Bee" is absolutely haunting, and she narrates this tale of what powerful and distant greed does to the most innocent people.  On amazon.com it says the publisher didn't want to ruin the story by revealing too much of the plot.  What I can say is that reading this book is a chance to step into a completely foreign existence, to see our world from the outside in.   For me, it reinforced the fact that everything we do (such as filling our gas tanks) has consequences for someone, like a "butterfly effect" of our own free will and making.  In this book, you'll go to Nigeria, and England, and meet a little boy who thinks he's Batman.  You'll see the real price of oil, and greed, and dishonesty, and desperation.  But you'll also see the value of the human spirit when all else is stripped away and no immediately-discernable hope is left.  Just as how you get to know people in real life, the history of the characters becomes more and more clear as the book goes on.  And the characters are all transformed by the circumstances.  A bit unforgettable, this book, and a beautifully produced audio book too.  I listened to several author interviews, but this one from Better World Books podcast (also on itunes) is my favorite and has less spoilers.

Outcasts United by Warren St. John

I read this book because it was chosen for the One Maryland One Book program for 2010.  Outcasts United is supposedly being made into a movie, and I can see why; it's super heartwarming.  It's about a kids soccer team called "The Fugees" that is a lifeline to many refugee kids from other countries.  Fugees is simply short for "Refugees," and is not named after the formerly-popular hip hop group.  The town of Clarkston, Georgia has had a complex influx of refugees from many countries since the 1990's.  Here's a video link on Luma Mufleh, the Jordanian woman who took these kids in hand and got them a soccer program, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.  This book came out of a popular series of articles in the NY Times, and so it's written in a journalism style--it's not the great American novel, but I didn't care.  I listened to the book and found it easy to follow, despite the fact that it often digresses to highlight the backstory of a particular child and their family.  All the children are from war-torn countries and situations, and many have endured great hardship.  The book starts out at the very beginning of this now-successful soccer program, and takes you through their early struggles, including just trying to get the right to play on a safe plot of unused grass built for games such as soccer.   Here's a link to the Fugees organization with a touching short video showing the beautiful faces of the boys on the team.  Here's another link to a couple of good youtube videos by the author.  I don't even know how to play soccer, and I still liked this book!

THE FUGITIVE WIFE by Peter C. Brown

This book is really an adventure.  Set in 1900, it moves back and forth between Minnesota farmland, and the gold rush at Nome, Alaska.  Claims are jumped, fortunes are made, and dreams are shattered, all against the wild backdrop of the eastern Alaskan shorelines.  I really feel this is a great read for both men and women.  The main character is Essie, a capable young farm woman who flees her abusive husband and runs about as far away as she can get.  But she ends up in a man's world; a place teeming with machinery and men of all stripes.  As all the newcomers establish a foothold in this landscape that is so foreign to them, Essie's story unfolds, as does that of her husband, Leonard, and her new love interest, Nate.  This is not as heavy and political as, say, The Poisonwood Bible, but is every bit as adventurous and well researched.  The author's grandfather was a gold prospector in Nome, Alaska, from 1900-1902.  The amount of detail in the times and places was woven seamlessly in, and just made everything even more colorful.  The link for the book is here and it's got some great photos and author comments.  Just a really entertaining read, and with some beautiful, cut-glass phrasing to boot.  Highly recommended.   p.s.  A complementary movie to watch would be "Sweet Land" an absolutely wonderful movie set in MN.

City of Thieves by David Benioff

At only 258 pages, this is a great, quick read for both men and women alike.  Set during the siege of Leningrad in 1942, this story revolves mainly around two young men, boys really.  Lev is Jewish and so his existence is precarious at best.  Kolya is blond, blue-eyed, with handsome Cossack features.  Where Lev is introverted and shy, Kolya oozes confidence, and charms everyone around him. 

Lev's father (a famous poet) has been "taken" by the secret police, and his mother and sister have fled the city.  Like most teenage boys, Lev proudly stays behind to defend his home, and is the commander of his apartment building's volunteer fire brigade.   One night on the roof, Lev and his friends see a downed paratrooper and rush to ransack the body.  You see, they are all starving.  Cannibalism is rampant (a true historical fact) and they are tearing apart books to boil down the bindings to eat the animal proteins in the glue.  This confection is called "Library Candy" and it's hard to come by and very expensive.  There are no dogs and cats left in the city.  Lev is caught looting the paratrooper's body, and sent to a formidable and infamous prison known as The Crosses.  There he meets Kolya, and the next morning, they are dragged before a high-ranking military officer who tells them they can go free on one condition.  They must somehow procure one dozen eggs, to be used in a wedding cake for the Colonel's beautiful daughter.  How they go about getting one dozen fragile eggs in the middle of a war, in the dead of a brutal Russian winter is the event-filled story.  This author was a student of Ann Patchett (Bel Canto) and he also wrote the screenplay for the movie The Kite Runner.  To write this book, David Benioff relied heavily on the personal diaries and journals of those who survived the actual siege, and historical books written about same.   The Nine Hundred Days by Harrison Salisbury was his bible as he wrote.  With the somber subject matter, I thought this would be a hard book to get through, but it wasn't.  It's not a long book and there are little moments of levity in among the harrowing circumstances.  A really interesting read.

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

OK, this is the book of the summer for me.  It might even turn out to be the book of the year for me.  The author has ancestral ties to the old Mormon church in Utah, and maybe that's how he's been able to make it seem as if you're really stepping into that world behind the walls of a large polygamist family compound.  In an earlier post I reviewed the book The Nineteenth Wife  by  David Ebershoff.  Whereas the modern-day portion of that book was set mostly outside the grounds of the Mormon church and its family compounds, this one is right smack dab in the middle of it.  We have our main character Golden Richards; an innocent, bumbling hulk of a man who is overwhelmed by his four wives and his 28 children, and all the bills they come with.  Every character is finely etched, right down to Cooter the bug-eyed dog, and four-year-old Ferris who revels in running around with no pants on with all the joy of an escaped convict.  There's one wife, Trish, who is a bit more in focus than the others, and we see a lot of the Richards family through her eyes.  And then there's Rusty, the young boy who gives us an entirely different view of this cloistered world.   In The Nineteenth Wife, we saw more of the darker side of plural marriage, the Lost Boys, etc.  In this book, we see a lighter side, in that the many members of the Richards family are all good people at heart.  But, when you have that many children and wives, how can everyone feel validated?  That is the question.  And what are the consequences?  To find that out, you'll have to dive into this story.  And to entice you a bit further, there are a lot of funny and poignant moments in this book.  I couldn't put it down.

Half Of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is the 2nd book by this author that I have read.  I have to say that, for me, this one blows her other book (Purple Hibiscus) out of the water.   And her other book was good.  So, if this book doesn't earn Adichie a coveted place in the hearts of the Nigerian People, I don't know what could.  It's just GOT to be a beloved classic for them, although only just published in 2007.  Whereas Purple Hibiscus felt very contained (which was entirely appropriate for the subject matter), this book makes you feel as though everyone in it is in danger of floating free of their physical moorings.  Set in the 1960s at the cusp of a bloody civil war that will hopefully birth the strong new nation of Biafra, this book is expansive and brilliant and Shakespearean, and based on history.  The main gist is that the Igbo people secede publicly amid rampant government corruption.  As always, the manipulative forces of Colonialism and foreign interests in the oil-rich nation are working behind the scenes.  These forces that could have been used for good, end up, as they most often do, costing a lot of innocent lives in the interest of greed.  With all of these government entities and armies, you would think that this book would be a bit cold, a bit dry.  But to the contrary, it's very, very intimate.  Many of the village people are good, desperately poor and naive, and want to believe that their government will come through for them finally.  They rally to the cause armed with only their ideals and the hope of a better life.  Our main characters, many of whom are Igbo,  are so fully developed that they seem real.  We have two Igbo sisters, Olanna and Kainene, and their men, and the houseboy, Ugwu.  Time and place are vividly brought to life, including a few Ex Pats and lots of locals, but the two characters who really become fully alive are beautiful Olanna and the innocent houseboy Ugwu.  They grow and develop along with the story, which will land you in the villages, in the towns, in the ragtag Biafran army where they have carved rifles out of wood, in the kitchens where Jolof rice is prepared, in the side yard where the butterflies flit, and in the back hall where Olanna's future mother in-law is literally using tribal witchcraft against her.  Whereas the first book was just dark for me, this book also has a lot of hope and light in it.  A lot of ideals and resourcefulness and things to admire.  This was a great history lesson for me too.  I had heard of the country of Biafra before, but if you had asked me to tell you where it was, I would not have known, and would have replied, "Somewhere in Africa."  Now I could never forget!