Born On A Blue Day

Born On A Blue Day by Daniel Tammet was originally published in 2006. My hardcover copy is 226 pages. Rating: 3.5

From Publishers Weekly at Amazon

This unique first-person account offers a window into the mind of a high-functioning, 27-year-old British autistic savant with Asperger's syndrome. Tammet's ability to think abstractly, deviate from routine, and empathize, interact and communicate with others is impaired, yet he's capable of incredible feats of memorization and mental calculation. Besides being able to effortlessly multiply and divide huge sums in his head with the speed and accuracy of a computer, Tammet, the subject of the 2005 documentary Brainman, learned Icelandic in a single week and recited the number pi up to the 22,514th digit, breaking the European record. He also experiences synesthesia, an unusual neurological syndrome that enables him to experience numbers and words as "shapes, colors, textures and motions." Tammet traces his life from a frustrating, withdrawn childhood and adolescence to his adult achievements, which include teaching in Lithuania, achieving financial independence with an educational Web site and sustaining a long-term romantic relationship. As one of only about 50 people living today with synesthesia and autism, Tammet's condition is intriguing to researchers; his ability to express himself clearly and with a surprisingly engaging tone (given his symptoms) makes for an account that will intrigue others as well. Copyright © Reed Business Information

Quotes:

"I have a rare condition known as savant syndrome, little known before its portrayal by actor Dustin Hoffman in....Rain Man.... I have an almost obsessive need for order and routine which affects virtually every aspect of my life." pg. 1

"Numbers are my friends and they are always around me. Each one is unique and has its own personality." pg. 2

"Scientists call my visual, emotional experience of numbers synesthesia, a rare neurological mixing of senses, which most commonly results in the ability to see alphabetical letters and/or numbers in color. Mine is an unusual and complex type, through which I see numbers as shapes, colors, textures, and motions." pg. 2

"I never write anything down when I'm calculating, because I've always been able to do the sums in my head, and it's much easier for me to visualize the answer using my synesthetic shapes than to try to follow the 'carry the one' techniques taught in the textbooks we were given at school." pg. 4

"People with Asperger's often have good language skills and are able to lead relatively normal lives. Many have above average IQs and excel in areas that involve logical or visual thinking.." pg. 6

"Single-mindedness is a defining characteristic, as is a strong drive to analyze detail and identify rules and patterns in systems. Specialized skills involving memory, numbers, and mathematics are common." pg. 7

"I find it almost impossible to 'read between the lines.' " pg. 76

Pg.'s 176-177, two sentences that help people memorize some of the digits of pi (3.14159265358979...):

"How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics."

"Sir, I send a rhyme excelling

In sacred truth and rigid spelling

Numerical sprites elucidate

For me the lexicon's dull weight

If nature gain

Not you complain,

Tho' Dr. Johnson fulminate."

People of the Book

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks was originally published January 1, 2008 and is 372 pages. This is not a mystery per se, but it does take literary license to flesh out a historical mystery: how the Sarajevo Haggadah managed to survive during all the centuries of turmoil that has beset the Jewish people. Reviewing it as a mystery would be to do great disservice to the People of the Book. What Brooks does is alternate chapters set in the present (1996;2002) with chapters set in 1940 Sarajevo, 1894 Vienna, 1609 Venice, 1492 Tarragona, and 1480 Seville. The story is really the history and journey of the Sarajevo Haggadah and how it managed to survive all those centuries

I will have to agree with other reviewers in one minor point: I could have done with less of the story of Hanna. I would have enjoyed it more, I think, if Hanna stayed a minor character who simply found the clues - an insect wing, wine stain, salt crystals, and a white hair - during the present day documentation of the condition of the Haggadah that compelled her to try and unravel the mystery of where the Haggadah was and how it managed to survive. The clues that were then explained in the alternate chapters were the real treasures in this book. Rating: 4

Amazon.com Review:

One of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images, the Sarajevo Haggadah survived centuries of purges and wars thanks to people of all faiths who risked their lives to safeguard it. Geraldine Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March, has turned the intriguing but sparely detailed history of this precious volume into an emotionally rich, thrilling fictionalization that retraces its turbulent journey. In the hands of Hanna Heath, an impassioned rare-book expert restoring the manuscript in 1996 Sarajevo, it yields clues to its guardians and whereabouts: an insect wing, a wine stain, salt crystals, and a white hair. While readers experience crucial moments in the book's history through a series of fascinating, fleshed-out short stories, Hanna pursues its secrets scientifically, and finds that some interests will still risk everything in the name of protecting this treasure. A complex love story, thrilling mystery, vivid history lesson, and celebration of the enduring power of ideas, People of the Book will surely be hailed as one of the best of 2008. --Mari Malcolm

Quotes:

"I might as well say, right from the jump: it wasn't my usual kind of job." pg. 1

"....I agreed to take this job. To be honest, it never occurred to me to not take it. You don't say no to the chance to work on one of the rarest and most mysterious volumes in the world." pg. 8

"For a start, most books like this, rich in such expensive pigments, had been made for palaces or cathedrals. But a haggadah is used only at home. The word is from the Hebrew root hgd, "to tell," and it comes from the biblical command that instructs parents to tell their children the story of the Exodus." pg. 19

"I hate driving in Boston, It's the traffic that drives me spare, and the absolutely terrible manners of the motorists. Other New Englanders refer to Massachusetts drivers as 'Massholes.' " pg. 134

"Even after thirty years in the city, he still loved the light and the air of Venice, its mingled scents of brine and moss, mold and moist plaster." pg. 149

"Think about it. You've got a society where people tolerate difference, like Spain in the Convivencia, and everything's humming along: creative, prosperous. Then somehow this fear, this hate, this need to demonize 'the other' - it just sort of rears up and smashes the whole society. Inquisition, Nazis, extremist Serb nationalists...same old, same old. It seems to me the book, at this point, bears witness to all that." pg. 195

"The art world in England is an absolute magnet for the second sons of threadbare lords or women named Annabelle Something-hyphen-Something who dress in black leggings and burnt orange cashmeres and smell faintly of wet Labrador." pg. 262

For my Sister

www.freegraphics.com 2006, Marie Terry

Holidays on Ice

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris was originally published in 1997. My hardcover copy is 137 pages. Most of the stories in this short collection have been included in other books by Sedaris. In certain stories, I find Sedaris' humor wildly hilarious and I picked up Holidays on Ice specifically for the SantaLand Diaries, but I enjoyed this whole collection.

Quotes:

"Situated in Raleigh's first shopping center, her cafeteria was a clubhouse for local senior citizens who might spend an entire afternoon huddled over a single serving of rice pudding." pg. 73

"In an effort to save money, my family had decided to try something new and draw names. This cruel lottery left my fate in the hands of Lisa, whose idea of a decent gift was a six-pack of batteries or a scented candle in the shape of a toadstool." pg. 78

"The only bright spot in the evening was the presence of Kevin 'Tubby' Matchwell, the eleven-year-old porker who tackled the role of Santa with a beguiling authenticity. The false beard tended to muffle his speech, but they could hear his chafing thighs all the way to the North Pole." pg. 97

"For those of you who don't know me, my name is Jim Timothy and, as you've probably gathered by my full set of God-given teeth, I'm not from around these parts." pg. 103-104

The Way the Crow Flies

The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald was originally published in 2003. My hardcover copy is 722 pages. After reading MacDonald's Fall on Your Knees and not enjoying it at all, I waited a long time before I picked up The Way the Crow Flies, despite the fact that it was receiving many strong recommendations. I must say that The Way the Crow Flies was a significantly better book. However, even though I'm going to highly recommend it, I am not going to be reading any more of MacDonald's books.

The Way the Crow Flies opens as the McCarthys, a Canadian Airforce family, are moving from Germany to their new home base in Ontario. The McCarthy family includes: Jack, an air force officer; Mimi, his Arcadian wife; and their children, Mike, twelve; and Madeleine, eight. As the family settles into their new home on the base, the secrets that Jack and Madeleine must keep hidden begin. Juxtaposed with what is perceived as a time of innocence, we know right at the beginning of the novel that there is going to be a murder. But this is much more than a murder mystery novel. It is a novel about the secrets that are being hidden and how one lie can lead to another.

MacDonald does set the tone for the times and her references through the first two thirds of the novel do reflect the early sixties. She is also quite a skilled writer. I was totally engrossed in the story and couldn't believe this was the same author who wrote Fall on Your Knees. The characters, their actions, their secrets, and their dilemmas were all encompassing. I stayed up way-too-late gulping down page after page when the secrets were concealed, the lies or half truths began, the murder happened, and the trial began. It was truly almost a flawless novel and worth a rating of 5, at least it was until around page 525. This is when the story jumps years in to the future.

The last third of the novel meanders about and loses it's intensity and focus. In many ways ending after the trial or coming up with some short conclusion that has no answers would have been a better ending than the one MacDonald gives the reader. It was hard to perceive it as the same book. With the first two thirds so adeptly written, the last third didn't even feel like it was written by the same author who penned the first part. The final conclusion did tie things up and gave us an ending, but it left me feeling like MacDonald could have gotten us to the same twist at the end much sooner and with a more dramatic effect if she had edited down the last 200 pages to 25 pages.

All of this leaves me with a dilemma. The first 520 pages of The Way the Crow Flies was right up there as one of the best novels I've read this year. The last 200 pages were so bad in comparison that they would have sent me packing if I didn't have a commitment to get to the end of the book. I'm rating The Way the Crow Flies a 4, but I'm done reading MacDonald.

Quotes:

"It is possible, in 1962, for a drive to be the highlight of a family week." pg. 3

"If your father is in the airforce, people ask you where you are from and it's difficult to answer. The answer becomes longer the older you get, because you move every few years." pg. 11

"You know, Peter Sellers had the right idea. We ought to declare war on the Americans. They'll come in and hammer us, then give us a whole bunch of aid and we'll be better off than ever." pg. 90

" 'I'm dying for a fag,' says Auriel, and Lisa Riddelle pulls out a pack of Popeye candy cigarettes. The three of them light up and inhale gratefully." pg. 101

"There is nothing so persuasive to deep recall as the hum of the slide projector in the dark. The audible fuzz that follows each colour slide as it sh-clinks into view." pg. 111

"Impressive, but not surprising in an American service wife. Their ability to march in and out on a dime and a blaze of home-baked, fully accessorized glory is legendary." pg. 151

"If you believe hard enough, is it possible to enter the world of a book?" pg. 219

"The way her parents behave whenever they do some crazy thing like this compounds her mortification and completes her happiness." pg. 271

"But he has no patience with young people who take their freedom for granted, whining about 'American imperialism.' Where do they think their 'free this' and 'free that' come from? We like to blame the Americans, but we like to spend the dividends too." pg. 521

"We all need to look under the rock from time to time. We are all afraid of the dark, and drawn to it too, because we know that we left something there, something just behind us. We can feel it now and then, but fear to turn lest we catch sight of what we long to see." pg. 543

The Terror

The Terror by Dan Simmons was originally published in 2007. My hardcover copy is 769 pages. This is not a history lesson or even a historical novel; it is a fictional novel loosely based on a few historical facts mixed with horror elements. While there are many historical facts and details woven into the story, it is basically a novel that combines mythology and gothic horror with historical facts. Based on the details Simmons has included in The Terror, it really needs it's own classification as a "historical horror novel." It is also a real chunkster, but the story is compelling enough that you will find yourself reading it quickly. A case could be made that portions of The Terror could have easily been edited out without causing the whole scope of the story to suffer. (There are some gratuitous sex scenes that don't really push the story forward and seem to be there simply for the titillation value.) While the ending is satisfying on some level, it's also feels a bit forced and contrived. All in all, I highly recommend The Terror. This could be a great summer vacation book. Rating: 4

Synopsis from cover:

The men aboard the HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported as enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.

When the expedition's leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Inuit woman who cannot speak and who may be the key to survival - or the harbinger of their deaths. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear that there is no escape.

The Terror swells with the heart-stopping suspense and heroic adventure that have won Dan Simmons praise as "a writer who not only makes big promises but keeps them" (Seattle Post-Intelligence). With a haunting and constantly surprising story based on actual historical events, The Terror is a novel that will chill you to your core.

Quotes:

First two sentences "Captain Crozier comes up on deck to find his ship under attack by celestial ghosts. Above him - above Terror - shimmering folds of light lunge but then quickly withdraw like the colorful arms of aggressive but ultimately uncertain spectres." pg. 1

"To go out on the frozen sea in the dark now with that...thing...waiting in the jumble of pressure ridges and tall sastrugi was certain death." pg. 6

"In this cold, teeth can shatter after two or three hours - actually explode - sending shrapnel of bone and enamel flying inside the cavern of one's clenched jaws." pg. 8-9

"While it remained a Mystery how the consumption or pneumonia or a combination of the two had been able to kill the able bodied seaman so quickly, it was at least obvious that we had nothing to fear from some Plaguelike Disease." pg. 68

"[B]ut he knew something that the men did not; namely that the Devil trying to kill them up here in the Devil's Kingdom was not just the white-furred thing killing and eating them one by one, but everything here - the unrelenting cold, the squeezing ice, the electrical storms, the uncanny lack of seals and whales and birds and walruses and land animals, the endless encroachment of the pack ice, the bergs that plowed their way through the solid white sea not even leaving a single ship's length lee of open water behind them, the sudden white-earthquake up-=eruption of pressure ridges, the dancing stars, the shoddily tinned cans of food now turned to poison, the summers that did not come, the leads that did not open - everything." pg. 189

"Death by starvation is a terrible thing, Goodsir, continued Stanley. Trust me. I've seen it in London and I've seen it with shipwreck. Death by scurvy is worse. It would be better if the Thing took us all tonight." pg. 236

"Maybe reading is a sort of curse is all I mean, concluded Fowler. Maybe it's better for a man to stay inside his own mind." pg. 340

"The problem with a student-teacher relationship was, he realized not for the first time, that it never changes while everything around it does." pg. 369

"Crozier....had seen this phenomenon many times before - false things in the sky....[I]n the spring of 1847, Crozier had come on deck to find black spheres floating in the southern sky." pg. 434

Apex Hides the Hurt

Apex Hides the Hurt by Colson Whitehead was originally published in 2006. My hardcover copy has 212 pages. I really enjoyed this quirky little novel. Wonder Boy was assigned it in one of his college classes so I decided to read it before he sold it back to the book store. In many ways, I'm surprised at how much I appreciated this sharp, witty story. On the one hand it's a relatively simple plot about a nomenclature consultant who is called in to rename a town. But that simplifies the story too much because there are other less obvious themes involving duty, names, image, hidden hurt, identity, and marketing. There were some nice subtle surprises waiting at the end of the book. Whitehead is a very good writer and has a definite gift with words. I highly recommend Apex Hides the Hurt. Rating: 4.5

(*Note: I had originally given Apex Hides the Hurt a 4, but months later I'm still thinking about it, so I've upped it to a 4.5.)

Synopsis from Barnes and Noble:

The town of Winthrop has decided it needs a new name. The resident software millionaire wants to call it New Prospera; the mayor wants to return to the original choice of the founding black settlers; and the town’s aristocracy sees no reason to change the name at all. What they need, they realize, is a nomenclature consultant. And, it turns out, the consultant needs them. But in a culture overwhelmed by marketing, the name is everything and our hero’s efforts may result in not just a new name for the town but a new and subtler truth about it as well.

Quotes:

"A good name did not dry up and get old. It waited for its intended." pg. 4

"Roger Tipple did not have a weak chin so much as a very aggressive neck" pg. 5

"All the grass in the park was impossibly level. For community service drunk drivers probably knelt with scissors." pg. 9

"He took him for the brand of retiree who becomes a night watchman of the afternoon, patrolling the grounds, scribbling down license plate numbers of suspicious vehicles." pg. 10

"Writing your town's local history was the librarian version of climbing Everest, he figured." pg. 12

"He had found, in his life, that it was always a good policy to flee when white people felt compelled to inform you about their black friend, or black acquaintance, or black person they saw on the street that morning." pg. 80-81