"The Lone Wolf". By Jodi Picoult

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published  2012
• Review:  Not my favorite Picoult.....

"Transatlantic" by Colum McCann

• Early Review edition
• Irish author
• Originally published 2013
• Setting:  Ireland, United States
• Key historical figures:  Frederick Douglass, George Mitchell, Alcock & Brown
• Epigraph Part 1: "No history is mute.  No matter how much they own it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth.  Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is."  - Eduardo Galeano
• Epigraph Part 2:  "But this is not the story of a life.  It is the story of lives, knit together, overlapping in succession, rising again from grave after grave." - Wendell Berry, From "Rising"
• Vocabulary:
• funambulist:  a tightrope walker.
• Quotes:
• p.1..."It was that time of the century when the idea of a gentleman had almost become myth."
• p.37..."The poor were so thin and white, they were almost lunar."
• p.79..."My sister has a mind of her own.  Unfortunately she lost it a few years ago."
• p.87..."What she worries most of all is that he will become the flesh at the end of an assassin's bullet."....nice phrasing
• p.95..."The vague hope of helping to turn the long blue iceberg, the deep underwater of Irish history."
• p.95..."It is one of their beauties, the Irish, the way they crush and expand the language all at once."
• p.101..."He was told once that any good Irishman would drive fifty miles out of his way just to hear an insult--and a hundred miles if the insult was good enough."
• p.120...."It is as if, in a myth, he has visited an empty grain silo........Three ways down from the silo,.  They can fall into the grain and drown, they can jump off the edge and abandon it, or they can learn to sow it very slowly at their feet."---metaphor for Irish peace talks
• p.124..."We prefigure our future by imagining our pasts.  To go back and forth.  Across the water.  The past, the present, the elusive future.  A nation.  Everything constantly shifted by the present.  The taut elastic of time.."
• p.153..."The glorious vanity of dying." - enlisting
• p.165..."The infinity of her inkwell....Hours of loss and escape.  Insanity and failure.  Scratching one word out, blotting the middle of a page so it was unreadable anymore, tearing the sheet into long thin strips.  The elaborate search for a word, like the turning of a chain handle on a well.  Dropping the bucket down the mineshaft of the mind.  Taking up empty bucket after empty bucket until, finally, at an unexpected moment, it caught hard and had a sudden weight and she raised the word, then delved down into the emptiness once more."
• p.191..."What was a life anyway?  An accumulation of small shelves of incident.  Stacked at odd angles to each other."
• p. 191..."Emily could sense the skip in her life, almost like the jumping of a pen.  The flick of ink across a pag.  The great surprise of the next stroke.  The boundlessness of it all.  There was something in it akin to a journey across the sky......
• p.218..."We return to the lives of those who have gone before us, a perplexing mobius strip until we come home, eventually to ourselves."
• p.259..."We have to admire the world for not ending on us"
• Interesting points:
• Alcock & Brown:  1919, flew the Vickers Vimy from Newfoundland to Ireland, taking the war out of flight, "first aerial mail to cross from the New World to the Old......what a surprise it is when distance finally breaks
• Frederick Douglass:  comes to Ireland to raise funds for fight against slavery and to await final negotiations with his "owner" so he can return to the US a free man
• George Mitchell:  brokers peace between Northern and Southern Ireland
• Image of a footprint disappearing as water washes over it at the seashore....metaphor for ephemeral nature of of life
• Review:  I read an Early Reviewer edition of this new novel from Colum McCann.  Lots of authors are using the multi-narrative structure in the last few years, but Colum McCann is without a doubt the most adept in this model. His use of language is beautiful, his characters are memorable, and his narrative is engaging and thought-provoking on multiple levels.  In this novel, tranatlantic voyages frame the way in which lives can touch one another in what seems like a brief moment in time, yet have impact that can cross generations.  Taking three actual historical events, McCann is able to touch on themes of greatness, the ability to face challenge with courage, the intertwining of lives, loves, and honor.  Timelessness is central to this marvelous book, and timeless describes my feelings about the merit of this novel.

"The Glass Key" by Dashiell Hammett. **

• Audiobook
• US author
• Originally published 1931
• Review:  Just could not get into this.

"Noon at Tiffany's" by Echo Heron ****

• Book Club selection June 2013
• Historical Fiction
• Originally published 2012
• US author
• Review:  A good story, an interesting and somewhat scandalous revelation, and the Tiffany name combine to make this a very enjoyable read.  I am uncomfortable with half of the story being fabricated.  It makes it difficult to know what to take away from reading it.  The themes are all of interest: women's rights, intellectual/artistic property, socioeconomic discrimination, lousy romantic choices, the value of natural family and family of choice....yep....all interesting.

"My Beloved World" by Sonia Sotomayor ****

• Book Club selection May 2013
• Memoir
• Originally published 2012
• "The vocabulary of hindsight"....really like that
• "Duel in the Canefield" by Manuel Mur Oti
• Sonia joined Forensic Team to strengthen her ability to speak publicly...like my Zibby!
• She draws parallel with "Lord of the Flies", the need for law and order.  Power only comes from what we agree to honor
• p.101.."They were like two trees with buried roots so tangled that they inevitably leaned on each other, and also strangled each other a bit."....Mama Celina and here sister Aunt Titi
• p.97..."I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down:  people can't imagine someone else's point of view
• "Seeing my mother get back to her studies was all the proof I needed that a chin of emotion can persuade when one forged of logic won't hold.  But more important was her example that a surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence."
• first word processed senior thesis at Pronceton
• limits of class and cultural background rather than aptitude or application
• p.147.."Quiet pragmatism, of course lacks the romance of vocal militancy. But I saw myself more a mediator than a crusader."....
• p.149..."I needed a history in which I could anchor my own sense of self. "
• Analysis of what was different between herself and cousin and dear friend, Nelson.....he was an addict, died of Aids.
• p.157..."Of all the links, language remains strong, a code of the soul that unlocks for us the music and poetry, the history and literature of Spain and all of Latin America.  But is is also a prison
• p.178..."When a young person, even a gifted one, grows up without proximate living examples of what she may aspire to become--whether lawyer, scientist, artist, or leader in any realm--her goal remains abstract....a role model in the flesh provides more than an inspiration; his or her very existence is confirmation of possibilities one may have every reason to doubt....."
• p.255...."...suffice it so say, somehow a synergy of love and gratitude, protection and purpose, was implanted in me at a very young age.  And it flowered in the determination to serve."
• Review:  Very readable, very interesting, and very human.  I enjoyed reading this book from start to finish.  Sonia Sotomayor writes about her life from early childhood to her first appointment as a judge.  She clearly details the influences which brought her to adulthood and the Supreme Court, namely, family, juvenile diabetes, hardship,loss, and many mentors along the way.  I think I was most impressed with her clear description of the vast cultural gap between life n the Bronx and life amongst the powerful and wealthy.  A very good read.

"The Burgess Boys" by Elizabeth Strout ****

• Early Review edition
• US author
• Originally published 2013
• Folks wanting to be open-minded about immigrants:  "....Just as long as there aren't too many of them....".
• "...The unfurling of an ache so poignant it was almost erotic, this longing, the inner silent gasp as though in the face of something unutterably beautiful, the desire to put his head down on the big loose lap of this town, Shirley Falls.".....loveliest line in the book
• Is Maine really the whitest state in the USA?
• Review:   A very good story about two brothers who must shake off the assumptions of their pasts in order to emotionally survive the present.  The catalyst, the arrest of their unhappy nephew, forces change and the author tells the story well.  The story looks at relationships from multiple perspectives; marital, sibling, parent/child, past and present.  Well done!

"Leaving Everything Most Loved" by Jacqueline Winspear *****

• Audiobook
• #10 in the Maisie Dobbs series
• English author
• I love the narrator, Orlagh Cassidy
• Interesting attention to racial bias in 1930s London
• Search for self knowledge
• Review:  Absolutely fabulous installment of the Maisie Dobbs series.  Change is in the air for many of the beloved returning characters.  Change of era, change of work, change in family, and cultural change all figure significantly in the story, along with the timeless issue of immigration as seen from inside and outside.  Great read!

"Ceremony" by Leslie Marmon Silko *****

• Audiobook
• Native American author
• Originally published 2006
• Review:   Audiobook....A powerful story about the power of personal and cultural story in preserving and healing the spirit. The structure reflects the dream/nightmare experience of the protagonist, a Native American returning from war. I let myself submerge in the narrative and was pulled along, experiencing a wide range of emotion on the journey.  Marvelous read!