Love and Other Consolation Prizes, by Jamie Ford is a wonderful, tender historical historical novel. It is a bookend style that begins with the 1902 Seattle World's Fair and ends with the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. The cast of characters is actually very small, but we get to know them very well. Their decisions are often based on other's happiness. They look for happiness without really knowing what it is.
This novel focuses a most unusual family bound by love and like purpose. We love them because they need our love. This book succeeds because we do. If I have a quibble with MS Ford it is with the pace of her narrative. A quickening might have enlivened several sections of this novel. Overall though, it is delightful and appropriate for younger and older readers and book clubs

The author who writes historical fiction chooses the extra burden, because not only must she devise an entertaining and intricate plot, and appealing characters, but also create a detailed and historically authentic world in which they live and die. Antonia Hodgson, the author of "The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins" brings the early 18th century London to life in a very gritty way. We experience the luxurious apartments King George, his queen and mistress to the filthy, gang ridden streets to the vermin, rat infested gaols we are right there with our anti-hero-hero Thomas and his loyal girlfriend, Kitty. A thoroughly enjoyable adventure. I highly recommend.

Whenever I start a new novel I look forward to meeting characters I would love to have as friends. In Crazy Blood, I could find not one person I would love to meet for hot chocolate. The only hope I saw was brother Robert, but he exited the plot early. I had hope for Wylie's sisters and his girlfriend. Then they turned out to be selfish bobbleheads. Wylie's half-brother Skye and his grandfather Adam put up barriers to Wylie's ambitions. The climax focuses on the BIG SKI RACE, but it too disappoints. The ending is predictable and belongs in an afternoon soap opera. I cannot recommend.

In Mimi Baird's search for her father Doctor Perry Baird, we get to follow her sad lifelong journey from childhood to 75. Although he died a broken man in 1960. Doctor Baird was lost to Mimi in 1944 when he suffered a critical manic episode and was confined to a mental hospital in Connecticut. From that point on Mimi's father was, in her mother's words "away." At four Mimi remembered just enough of her father to miss him desperately. When he died she and her sister went to funeral in Texas and ultimately came into possession of her father's journal/manuscript he wrote while in the Connecticut hospital.

This book tells the very tragic story of a genius physician suffering from manic depression and trying to find a cause/cure from the inside out. As it turns out he was on the right track, but treatment of the mentally ill in the 40s and 50s was so horrid it finally destroyed his brilliant mind. In the end Dr. Baird never reached the moon, but his daughter and the reader come to know and appreciate a great, misunderstood man.

Pulitzer Prize Winning journalist Katherine Boo has given readers a fascinating look at the poor in a slum near Mumbai's international airport. These poor are not stereotypical, however, they are individuals with names, histories and personalities. They are entrepreneural. They have hopes and dreams and flaws. Their lives are impacted by corruption, chance, and their own destiny. This book is a revelation to anyone like me who like me is used to seeing the poor as victims with their hands out. Boo's research is incredible. Her style is that of a reporter, but underneath she is oboviously championing her subjects cause. A worthwhile and enjoyable read.

Adam Johnson's view of life in North Korea is not for the feint of heart. Though fictional, it has the eerie sound of ultimate truth. This is a society without love, without hope, without any human emotion. The "beloved" leader is the source of all. There is nothing beyond what he allows and what comes over the loud speaker system: American invaders at the borders, retired Koreans luxuriating at state sponsored resorts. While prison camps and starvation abound. Against this background our anti-hero develops an obsession for a former movie actress and risks all for her. It gives his life meaning, but can it be love? I'm not convinced anyone is this society is capable of knowing what love is. Still it's a book worth reading.

Whenever I read an historical novel, my first test is how the author creates a sense of time and place. On this count Sara Poole is spot on in her novel, The Borgia Betrayal. The reader definitely feels the sense of fourteenth century Rome. It is vibrant, earthy and compelling. Unfortunately, the plot does not match the allure of Rome.

Poole's characters and story disappoint throughout the novel. There is little character development or appeal. Very little happens in terms of action. There were glimmers of promise when I hoped that something was going to happen only to be disappointed time and time again. I was sure the final 50 pages at least would produce a dynamic climax, but it was not to be.

Don't waste your precious time on this boring read.

Out of Wonderland is a book I kept wanting to like. As I read it I wanted to care about the three children: Alice, Dinah and Grif, but I didn't. I didn't like them, though I did want to know what happened to them in the end, I wasn't really invested in their fates.

I was intrigued with the premise of three orphaned children and their parents following their lives from heaven. But, their Greek Chorus parents were not involved in any meaningful way in their lives. They did not really know their children or care. None of us seemed to care about anyone or anything. When I finished the book I felt sorry for us all and the waste of time we had all exerted in this enterprise.

100 foot high waves? The mind boggles. Hundreds of sailors lost at sea every year due to rogue waves? Lloyds of London is on the line to pay out. Is climate change the cause or the effect? Why do a small cadre of surfers follow the really, really big waves around world from Hawaii, to California to South Africa...well you get the idea. There is a lot more to waves than you might imagine, and author Susan Casey certainly has found a way to educate the reader in all waves' many facets.

Casey alternates conversations and observations of giant waves with scientific understanding of what makes them tick. The result makes an intriguing and satisfying look at a mysterious and always engaging subject. It was a great ride and a great read.

Hip hop music and culture always eluded me. Being a white female I failed to see the allure, but having read Thomas Chatterton William's new autobiography, I think I get it now. This is an extremely well written voyage into the world of modern day black youth. Although Williams was born to a biracial, middle class intellectual couple he was still drawn into the Hip Hop mystique

How he was attracted to it and how he extricated himself from it forms the nexus of this "coming of age" voyage. I found the trip and the author's reflections very rewarding. It is sure to stir controversy and start readers thinking.

I have always found taxidermy fascinating. A little strange perhaps, but interesting. I spent 8 years in grad school at the University of Wyoming so I get the "trophy" aspect of "stuffing" animals, and I remember the museum dioramas from childhood and I've read about Victorian's fascination with personal collections is species. That being said, what motivates modern day taxidermists? Are there many left? Are they all like Norman Bates from Psycho?

Armed with these questions and a healthy curiosity, I was drawn to Melissa Milgrom's book on the subject. What I got were a lot of answers, but much more.
The author covers the gamut of these artists/technicians and along the way gives the reader insight into the field, the science, the history, the eccentricities and the politics that make up this field. There is a lot more to preserving animals than one might suppose and Milgrom takes the time to become a participant in the process as well as an observer. If you like to venture outside your comfort zone once in while, give this a try. Altogether Still Life is a riveting read.

Clare Clark takes the reader into a very primitive land in her historical novel, Savage Lands. This is not the Louisiana of the antebellum South, this is the pioneer land of 18th century French, English and Native American combatants. The initial background is the French effort to "civilize" settlement of the frontier by sending "casket wives" to the territory and it ends with the Louisiana Bubble, an economic disaster.

Throughout the well-researched narrative we follow the lives of women caught in the drama of settlement, love, betrayal and survival. It is reminiscent in many ways of novels coming out of third world countries today: women's lives playing against a much larger backdrop they cannot control.

Altogether a riveting and thought-provoking read.