The Great Gatsby

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by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

This book was our local book club’s choice for January of this year I thought it was an odd choice as most of the books we read are current non-fiction books.

As I read the book I initially experienced confusion. Fitzgerald doesn’t provide much context when he introduces new characters. Consequently, the reader has to follow the additional narrative for clues and then piece them together. Also, the timeline is not sequential so passages that flashback add additional clues.

Once everything is pieced together, we are left with a disturbing picture of an individual who was desperately trying to define his identity while, at the same time, stripping away the remnants of his true self. This is obviously not a good scenario for one’s mental health and it ultimately comes to a tragic end.

At our book club meeting there was discussion as to how the book offered a vignette of the times, i.e., the 1920’s and the emphasis on showing off the status of one’s wealth. Some of us were convinced, however, that Fitzgerald’s depiction of Gatsby transcends the time when it was written about and has relevance to the human condition now as well as in the past.

This book should be read slowly to allow it’s nuances to sink in. It’s not meant to entertain as much as to convey meaning. 4.0 stars

The Nickel Boys: A Novel

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by Colson Whitehead, Audiobook narrated by J.D. Jackson, 2019, Random House Audio

This is a dramatized novel about two boys who were incarcerated at a boy’s school in Northern Florida.  The school was closed a number of years ago but a graveyard was recently discovered containing a number of unmarked graves where boys who supposedly escaped were buried.  Many of the remains showed signs that the boys were beaten to death

The novel does a good job of showing the kinds of abuse that the boys suffered while at the school and particularly the long term effects on their lives after the survivors were released.  The book, however, leaves out entirely how the graves were discovered, the acknowledgement by the State of Florida of what went on there, and whether anyone was ever held accountable.  Instead, it focused on the life of one of the boys after he managed to escape.  I felt that this omission left the story somewhat incomplete.

The book is well written and impactful, but it jumped around a bit in its presentation so it was sometimes a little hard to follow.  The narration in this audiobook was good.  It’s not at all enjoyable, however, simply because of the subject matter.3.0 stars

The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War

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by Fred Kaplan, 2020, Simon & Schuster

This book is about the development of the strategy of national defense and how we would utilize nuclear weapons in the event of a threat to our country.  Actually, that statement isn’t exactly true as it is apparent from reading this book that we still haven’t figured it out.  To use them would entail our mutual destruction and the possibility of rendering our planet uninhabitable.  What is scary, however, is that there have been, and still are, individuals who actually subscribe to the notion of using nuclear weapons, either tactical or strategic, in various situations.

As I Kaplan went down the list of presidents who have held office since WWII (Truman to Trump), I was familiar with all of them (with the possible exception of Truman) and many of the individuals involved in these discussions as I am old enough to remember them.  It appears that I am have witnessed a lot of history in my life.  I realized that I have been living almost 75 years with a proliferation of nuclear weapons that have the potential of easily destroying our world if certain individuals make the decision to actually use them.  It’s something that’s always hanging over us  but not something that we think about each day.  There were a couple of time during this timeframe, however, that it almost came to pass: first during the Cuban Missle Crisis during Kennedy’s term, and then under Reagan’s first term when the Russians thought that he was actually going to launch a first strike against them.  Otherwise, nuclear policy isn’t something that we think about every day.

The books is fascinating and discouraging at the same time.  Discouraging because it appears that we still haven’t figured it out and the fact that the Start II Treaty is about to expire and there have been no new negotiations to extend it.

This is madness.  Bill Gates correctly predicted a few years ago that our next crisis would be a viral pandemic rather than nuclear war.  Once the pandemic is under control, however, should we start worrying about nuclear war again?

The book is well written but is not very enjoyable to read.  The number of Op orders that are referenced and their content seems to make a lot of what is covered redundant and not very easy to distinguish one from another.3.0 stars

The Silent Patient

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by Alex Michaelides, 2019, Audiobook narrated by Jack Hawkins and Louise Brealey, Macmillan Audio

The plot of this book is basically about a psychologist who want to treat a patient in a mental facility who was committed after being accused of murdering her husband.  That’s it!  The story has so many twists and turns, however, that the reader is kept unaware of what is really happening until the very end.

The book is well written with a lot of insight into the mind of a mentally deranged person.  The narration is excellent.  The plot, when further analyzed, may rely a bit too much on chances that are not likely to occur in real life, but the story does hang together.  This is a very enjoyable book to experience. 4.0 stars

The Testaments

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by Margaret Atwood, 2019, Nan A. Talese, Doubleday

This book is the sequel to The Handmaiden which was written 34 years prior.  The book appears to be in response to the overwhelming attention that the prior book has received in the last few years due, in part, to the Hulu television series and also due to the use of the images of the Handmaidens used in some current women’s rights protests.

The book takes place about 15 years after the events depicted in The Handmaiden.  It’s based on the testimony of some of the participants that was discovered many years later.  It essentially explains what happened after The Handmaiden novel abruptly ended.

Unlike The Handmaiden the events in The Testaments unfold in a much more transparent way.  The author assumes that the reader has read the prior book so she doesn’t spend much effort in bringing a reader who is unfamiliar with the scenario up to date but launches right into the story.  It takes a little bit of time to get used to who is providing the narrative as it jumps among the three primary characters.  Once you get the hang of who is narrating, it is pretty easy to follow.

I missed the creepiness of the prior book in this one.  I already understood Gillead’s kind of society so the events in this book didn’t really shock me, whereas the prior book kept creeping me out as it unfolded.  This book ended up a bit more like a thriller adventure story rather than a novel about living in a dystopia.

While the novel didn’t seem to have the impact that the first one did, it is a good follow up and is particularly good at addressing questions left unanswered by The Handmaiden. 3.5 stars

Camino Island: A Novel

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by John Grisham, 2017, Audiobook narrated by January LaVoy, Random House Audio

This is an enjoyable novel about some of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s original manuscripts of his novels that are stolen from the Princeton University Library.  They eventually end up at a book dealer’s in Camino Island which is located near Jacksonville, FL.  The ensuing effort to recover the novel from the dealer is the focus of the novel.

The characters are enjoyable, if somewhat overblown.  The narration is good and overall the plot hangs together.  The only downside is that there doesn’t seem to be enough suspense or “hook” in the plot.  The outcome seems pretty ho-hum. 2 1/2 stars

Dear Edward: A Novel

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by Ann Napolitano, 2020, Audiobook narrated by Cassandra Campbell, Random House Audio

This is a story about a young boy who is the only survivor of a commercial plane crash.

I had to get used to the way the book is constructed as most of it jumps between the events happening on the plane and later, when Edward is coping with his situation and loss.

The characters are well developed and the story is good.  The narration is excellent.3.0 stars

The Only Woman in the Room: A Novel

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by Marie Benedict, 2019, Sourcebooks Landmark

This is a novel about Hedy Lamarr and how she came to invent a method to transmit directions to torpedoes in WWII.

I enjoyed reading this because it was written in the first person.  In this way the author allows the reader to believe that the story is being told by Hedy Lamarr herself.  It is actually all fiction, but it is believable.

The story ends abruptly, however, without any information regarding what happens to Hedy Lamarr in her later life.  I believe the author owed it to the reader to provide an epilogue to the story.  Also, the book was somewhat repetitious toward the end.  It almost seemed as if it ran out of gas. 2 1/2 stars

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry: A Novel

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by Fredrik Backman, 2015, Narrated by Joan Walker, Simon and Schuster Audio

This is a story about a girl whose grandmother dies from cancer.  She was very close to her grandmother but didn’t know a lot about her grandmother’s early years.  She then finds that her grandmother has left apology notes with various individuals.

The author does a nice job with the characters and the dialogue in this novel, but the plot didn’t have enough substance to hold my interest. It’s a nice story, but a little boring.

The narrator is excellent but she sometimes dropped her voice so low that she was hard to understand.  When I turned the volume up to hear and she returned to her normal voice, I then had to turn it back down.  This situation was perhaps exacerbated because we listened to it in a car travelling 75 miles per hour. 3.0 stars

The Janson Directive

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by Robert Ludlum, 2002, Audiobook narrated by Paul Michael, Macmillan Audio

This is a fast-paced thriller that provides a number of plot twists.  The story is about a world philanthropist who is abducted and Paul Janson is asked to rescue him.  Things are not, however, what they seem.

The book is easy to listen to and entertaining. Ludlum includes a lot of psychological background of Paul Janson in addition to his heroics.  Sometimes the background flashbacks detract from the story line, but not so that it infringes too much.

Paul Michael does a nice job of narration.  The voices are very well done. 3.5 stars