Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale (Read 3/12-3/18)

I read this book because I was in between book club reads and I needed something quick to read.  This turned out to be just that.  I had seen the movie, so I knew the basic storyline.  I have to say the movie glamorized it much more than the book did.  It was a bit of a dry read, I mean the story itself was interesting Frank became a pilot because he saw one and wanted to be adored that way.  Everything fell into place for him to pull the scam because people were so trusting.  He would just walk in somewhere and get what he needed, that would never happen in today’s society.   The fact that he could pull off his impersonation for so long, is a sign of his intelligence, and his luck.  He did get caught eventually, but there were some tight spots before then he charmed his way out of.  When he was finally caught, I though France’s punishment seems too harsh for his crime; I mean he isn’t a murderer or a rapist.  They just about killed him for scamming some airlines.  Little bit of a let down at the end, I mean he just escaped in the US and the book ends.  Like a I said a quick read, but not a literary masterpiece.

The Drawing of Three (Dark Tower #2) by Stephen King (2/23-3/10)

BOTM voted to read the whole Dark Tower series, so I will be reading and reviewing the remaining 6 books in the series, and I may even try to fit in some side books.  I like the Dark Tower series, it is a fantastic mix of old west and fantasy that just gives me happy thoughts. 

The story of The Drawing of Three picks up with Roland on the beach we left him on at the end of the Gunslinger.  But there is a new danger, these crazy lobster monsters attack him wile passed out and he looses two of fingers and a toe.  for the rest of the series we will be constantly reminded that he has lost two fingers, but the toe is never mentioned again that I can recall.  I have always wondered what was the point of Roland loosing his fingers?  Did he need to be maimed to create a need to draw in other gunslingers? The shock of Roland loosing his fingers isn't the violence of losing his fingers, it was a that he lost such an essential part of who he is. I mean, who is Clint Eastwood or John Wayne without his guns? There was some debate in my book club about the simplicity of naming the monsters Lobtsrocities.  I like Lobstrocity, Roland isn't an imaginative character, so he wouldn't come up with anything that wasn't descriptive and based on what his realist mind sees.

After Roland is maimed he then wanders further down the beach and finds a door that says the “The Prisoner.”  Now if it was me and I found a random door on a beach, with no building or frame attached I’m not sure I would walk through it, but because he is Roland, and the fantastical seems to have no effect on him, he opens it and walks through.  Just like in the movie “Being John Malcovich” (which was made after this book was written) he is now in some other guy’s head.  Roland is a passenger in the head of Eddie Dean, a heroin addict about to be busted on a drug run.  So what does Roland do?  He magically takes the drugs back to the beach so Eddie doesn’t get busted, but that still doesn’t save Eddie’s ass from the Drug Dealer/Crime Lord he was running the drugs for.  In true Gunslinger fashion, this leads to a shoot out at the Drug Dealer/Crime Lord main base of operations, a night club called Tower.  Coincidence?  I think not.  I LOVE the image of Eddie fighting naked – all cracked out and crazy.   When all is said and done, and all the bad guys are dead, Roland takes Eddie back through his own head, i.e. door, to the beach and the door disappears.  I I like the Eddie, and I think Roland draws Eddie because even though he is from our world he is a gunslinger, that is after all why he was sent on the drug run, because even cracked out he still held it together. Roland can relate, and he even compared him to one of his old buddies.

Roland has gotten a really bad infection from loosing his fingers and toe, and Eddie, even cracked out had been smart enough to grab some antibiotics before going through the door.  So Eddie takes care of Roland and gets clean, and the ka-tet starts.   now I’m not saying Eddie, wanted to get clean, but all the heroin had been taken back before the big shoot out.  Just imagine a deathly ill gunslinger and heroin addict going through withdraws on beach, both probably hallucinating, have fevers and chills, raging at each other, doesn’t it sound like fun.  So Roland and Eddie both start to get better, not cured but better and the next door appears, titled “The Lady of Shadows.”  Eddie wants to go through and get a fix and Roland won’t let him.   Roland goes through the door, and again is in the mind of another person.  This time it is a black woman, shop lifting from Macy’s, her name is Odetta Holmes, but she also is Detta Walker.  O/Detta suffers from multiple personality disorder, and strangely enough Roland meets both women in the 5-10 minutes it takes him to haul her back through her door.  Which is timely because Eddie was just about to cut Roland’s throat. 

When Eddie and Roland discuss the O/Detta situation, Roland immediately understands the diagnosis, and by instinct knows the treatment is for O/Detta to be joined.  Of course Eddie had to fall for Odetta, before her Detta personality came out.  Seems a little cliché to me, but I know it is important to the storyline, not telling how though at this point.  Although, I personally think it would have been worse if it had been Odetta and Roland, because I know King always has a couple.

Did anybody else catch that Eddie mentions The Shining movie? This book was published in 1987 and The Shining movie came out in 1980, so there was only 7 years between the movie and the publishing, when King wrote this did he know his move would become a cultural icon, or did he just add the little blurb to pat himself on the back?

After a while of dealing with crazy Detta, which does seem to take forever!  The third door appears, title “The Pusher.”  Roland once again goes through alone, not because he feels he needs to hold Eddie back from a fix, but someone has to guard his body for Detta, or she is going to kill them both.  Roland’s infection has come back and maybe that is why I always feel the pusher chapter is rushed compared to the rest of the book. Maybe because Roland is sick and rushing the storyline, but still it is really a quick read to me.  When Roland goes through the door this time, he is in a sick man’s mind, and I don’t mean sick like as in ill, I mean sick as in likes hurting people.  While in there Roland saves Jake from being pushed, and then once he has his antibiotics he throws the pusher in front of a train.  Thereby forever saving Jake.  But now there is a paradox....Jake wasn't pushed in front of the car and sent to Roland's world...what does that do to the timeline...who did Roland let fall? Will Roland forget Jake? Is that the man in black's plan? Does Jake still die just some other way? 

When Roland comes back through, there is a brief fight with Detta, and Roland forcers her to face Odetta, and they join to become a whole new woman, Susannah Dean.  Now Roland has two new gun fighting companions, and they set off in search of the dark tower, and leave the beach behind.

This is an easy read, everything moves along at a nice pace, except the end of course, it seems to move to fast.  It stays pretty true to King’s writing style and we can see influences form other books.  I really enjoyed this book, it’s not my favorite in the series, but it is a good one.

I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai (Read 3/3/14 to 3/8/14)

This is a story about a girl born in Pakistan who stood up for women’s rights against the Taliban.  On October 9, 2012 her courage became around the world because she was shot while riding the school bus home.  Against all odds she survived a head shot and the world prayed and held its breath, and now we hear her story in her own words.

Malala comes from a non-traditional family, first of all her parents marriage is a love match, not an arraigned marriage.  Secondly, her mother had strong women as her role models, and although they never stepped out of their traditional role as women, she still had her opinions.  Mala’s father again bucked tradition by not only talking to but listening to Malala’s Mother’s advice.  Finally, and I think most importantly her father father loves/proud of daughter instead of ashamed that she wasn’t a son.  Malal’s father felt that education was just as imprortant for girls as for boys and he encouraged it in his own school.  Although he was a Muslim,Malala’s father did not prescribe the the stereotypical woman oppressing Muslim male image.  He believed in woman’s rights and would often say “Malala is free as a bird.”   Malala’s father was proud of her public speeches advocating for women’s education and condemning the oppression of the Taliban.  He never thought that Malala would be a target, their mistake was in thinking the Taliban would view him as the threat.  When Malala would discuss the potential danger her education and public speeches posed he would say to Malala “I will protect your freedom, Malala. Carry on with your dreams.”   I think he really did think she was safe, and that if anyone would be shot it would be him.

What I really liked about this book was that it provided a history of the Swat Valley of Pakistan and surrounding regions.  This explains how the Taliban took over and emphasis how lack of education, especially in women, contributed to the take over.  Malala lovers her her country and despite the terror and suffering she suffered in it, she still wants to return and make it a better place.  She has a love and a drive to make it someplace safer, someplace better.  Her dream is to become a politician and make actual changes and improvements for her people.  I hope that Malala does become a politician and betters the lives of her people.   This book made me want to support her dreams, and follow her story.  I’m hoping that years from now I will be reading about the differences she has made, and I hope she goes down as another Nelson Mandela type for the Pakistani people.

The Death Penalty in the United States: A Complete Guide to Federal and State Laws, Second Edition by Louis J. Palmer Jr.

This was a book I received as an Early Reviewer on LibraryThing.  I did not remember checking the box to say say I would read it, yet there it was in my mailbox.  I’m not going to lie, it is a very dry book, I am 99% sure it is aimed at being a text book.  I am not a legalese and if I hadn’t received this book the way I had I would not have read it.  It was very dry and hard for me to get through, and sadly I didn’t I made it to chapter 8 and just gave up.  I started just reading, but that didn’t work, I got lost and sadly had to start the book a second time.  On the second read I took detailed notes and underlined like a mad woman,  and it still didn’t work, although I did retain the information that I was reading.  Although I could not read this book as a lunch read or during other times that I didn’t have a chunk of time to devote to it.  There was just too much potential for loss of information if I didn’t read a whole chapter at a time.

In the intro, the author states that this book “aims to provide an objective review of how capital punishment works in the United States.”  He further states that “the primary focus of the book is upon issues that are resolved after a defendant has been convicted of a capital crime.”  Being the general populace I feel that he achieved his goal.  Again, not saying I would recommend this book to my book club, but it was an informative read.   The book is split into 6 parts. 

Part I lays out important foundation information. (5 chapters)  lots of law and history,  I made it through though.  Some of it was good, some of it was bad.  Some of the history was interesting, I think that is the only reason I kept reading.  It was just sooo dry and text bookish.

Part II examines specific issues involving the governmental office responsible for enforcing death penalty statutes – the office of the prosecutor. (5 chapters)  This is the section that lost me, it was all law and nothing of interest for me, and as much as I hate to say it, I just gave up.  My reading time is too precious to continue with something I am having this much trouble getting through.

Part III is an examination of substantive issues involving primarily the sentencing phase of death penalty prosecutions. (6 chapters)

Part IV is concerned with post-conviction remedies that a capital felon will try to obtain after being convicted. (4 chapters)

Part V outlines the laws involving execution of the death penalty. (4 chapters)

Part VI provides some discussion of diverse death penalty issues. (5 chapters)

White Oleander by Janet Fitch (2/15-2/22)

This was a bit of a busy month for me, so I thought I would try to listen to the book on tape, and I watched the movie.  Not good, I got to my book club and they were talking about sections I had no recollection of at all.  I guess I really do need to read it to absorb it, not just listen.  So as a result, I picked up the book and read it.

This is the story of Astrid, a young girl who grows into a woman while in foster care.  When Astrid is 12, her mother Ingrid poisons her boyfriend and is sent to prison.  The book follows Astrid through various foster home as she grows, both physically and emotionally.  Ultimately, this is a story of a girl growing into a young woman and finding herself, while leaving the shadow’s of her Mother’s personality behind.

The imagery in this book is amazing, I get lost in Fitch’s descriptions of things, beautiful poetry that I could stay lost in for hours.  Everything is so organic, there are flowers and plants everywhere.   In the beginning everything is beautiful and mysterious “the blue of the evening , turn velvet, indigo lingering like an unspoken hope.” Astrid is 12 and on the verge of puberty.  She is still an innocent girl who worships her mother, she hasn’t yet discovered that her mother is imperfect and human.  Ingrid is Astrid’s goddess and she worships her wholeheartedly, and Ingrid likes it that way.  “She thought because I was her daughter that I belonged to her, that she could do anything she wanted with me.”  The world is about Ingrid, who is a selfish and manipulative woman that uses her “art” as a reason to not be held to societies same rules of conduct.  If Ingrid hadn’t been sent to prison, there still would have been conflict because Astrid was growing up and on path to becoming her own person, which her mother never would have understood.  “I felt on the edge of something, a mystery that surrounded me like gauze, something I was beginning to unwind.”

Finch describes every home that Astrid is sent to, and it foreshadows the events that will happen there.  The first foster home that Astrid is sent to is with Starr, and ex stripper, alcoholic, and born again Christian.   “A plastic garden pinwheel stood motionless in a patch of geraniums.  Spider plants hung from pots on the wide trailer porch.”  “there were no fringy jacarandas here, only oleanders and palms, pear cactus and a big weeping pepper.”  Astrid is still naïve, and she still sees the beauty that is possible, but there is a sadness to the place, a loss of childhood and innocence that will happen when Astrid and Ray’s relationship develops and drives Starr to shoot Astrid and loose all that she has worked for.

After Astrid is shot she is sent to live with Marvel and Ed, a bigot who only sees Astrid as a hired maid, that she doesn’t have to pay.  “It was the color of a tropical lagoon on a postcard thirty years out of date, a Gauguin syphilitic nightmare. It was the gap in the chain of deciduous trees that cradled every other house on the block, defiantly ugly in its nakedness.”  Marvel is cheerful on the outside, but inside she is full of hate, for her neighbors, for Astrid, and possibly even herself.  Here Astrid meets Olivia, a whore, and learns that as a woman, she can have some control of her life, if she just takes it.  But one Marvel finds out about Astrid and Olivia’s friendship, she sends Astrid away.

Astrid arrives at her 3rd home, “A big wooden craftsman with a deep eaved porch, too nice for foster care.  Inside it was dark, the windows covered with heavy curtains.  The woodwork gleamed halfway up the walls, smelling of lemon oil.”  Amelia, looks picture perfect on the outside, nice house, nice person, but she isn’t she is cruel and vicious, taking the girls money from the foster system and remolding her house, all the while starving the girls.  Astrid learns here, that as cruel as it may seem, sometimes you have to look out for yourself and no-one else.

The home that Astrid finally found the love she had been looking for was with Claire.  “An old neighborhood of stucco bungalows and full-growth sycamores with chalky white trunks and leaves like hands.”  Claire was sick, and mentally unstable and Ingrid jealous of Clair and Astrid’s relationship manipulated her into committing suicide.  Astrid blames herself and feels that anything she gets after Clair is deserved.

When Clair dies, Astrid is sent to McLaren Children’s Center “Block walls, linoleum floors, the shadows of pines against the outside lights, and the sleeping shapes of my roommates under their thin thermal blankets.”  This is her own version of prison, where she must serve her time for allowing Clair to be touched and ruined by Ingrid.  Astrid has stopped worshipping her mother and has broken the connections as best she can.  But because of Clair’s death she doesn’t feel she deserves redemption or a good life and that is why she passes on a good family and instead chooses to go with Rena when she leaves the center.

Rena is a Russian immigrant who has a very selfish view of the world.  “A glum cocoa-brown Spanish bungalow with heavy plasterwork, dark windows and a patchy lawn surrounded by a chain-link fence.”  Rena is constantly asking “What is in it for me?”  She teaches Astrid to stand up for herself, and that she can demand things.  Astrid finally builds some defenses, not only against the world, but also against her mother.

In the final chapter, Astrid is living in Berlin with her boyfriend Paul , “It was crumbling and coal heated, but we could afford it most of the time.”  “I liked Berlin. The city and I understood each other.  I liked that they had left the bombed out hulk of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church as a monument to loss.  Nobody had forgotten anything here.  In Berlin, you had to wrestle with the past, you had to build on the ruins, inside them.  It wasn’t like America, where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time.  We hadn’t learned yet, that there was no such thing as an empty canvas.”   I could see the wrap up for Astrid, free of her mother, still drawn to her, but not giving into the temptation.  I was however very confused about her and Paul’s relationship.  There was no real build up to it, yeah they met at McLaren’s and connected but then nothing until she is living with him in Berlin.  It didn’t fit with Astrid’s character.  The whole book was about her growing and becoming her own person, a woman strong enough to defy her mother, then boom she is a girlfriend trying to promote her boyfriends dreams and not pursuing her own.  How did that happen?  What was the point of the book if she just becomes another woman behind the man?  Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it wasn’t the way the character was going.  It’s like at the end, Finch said oops nope that isn’t what I meant to write lets do a complete 360.  I loved the book, the rawness, the beauty in the writing.  But I think if I ever re-read it, I will stop at chapter 31.

The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower 1) by Stephen King Read 1/13-2/9

This is from my BOTM series, it is a second reading for me.  It was just as good as I remembered.  This is a fantasy novel meets the old west.  The main character Roland, is a “gunslinger” i.e. knight of his society.  The world has moved on, or is dying, it is full of mutants and empty landscapes.  I love the scenery, the old west and end of the world colliding.  Images of Mad Max fill my mind, but more Clint Eastwoody from The Good, The  Bad, and The Ugly.  The one town we encounter is a essentially a boarder town, that reminded me of Lonesome Dove, right down to the Saloon and piano player.  Don’t get me wrong, this is not like any other King series, there is no real jumpy parts, even when the mutants attack, it isn’t King’s normal scary stuff.  This is a nice quick read with limited main characters, Roland, Jake (enters half-way through) and the Dark Man.  After some of the more complicated storylines having just a few main characters to focus on was a really nice reprieve for my brain.  King does a great job setting up the series, he gives tid-bits of Roland’s past and the back story and the mission, without really telling us anything and making us want to read more.  This is a great start of the series.

Odd Hours (Odd Thomas #4) by Dean Koontz

This is the fourth book in the Odd series.  Odd left the monastery at the end of book three and headed off to the Coast with Frank Sinatra and his ghost dog Boo in tow.  When he gets there he gets the job of an in house chef for an reclusive actor from the 40's or 50's, his employer has a very small part and really adds nothing to the storyline.  In fact not many of the characters introduced add much to the storyline, every character is weirder than the last and I'm not sure what value they have other than that Koontz wanted to write about them.
The flow if this book wasn't as easy as the first one or even the second one, this book took me almost three times as long to get thorough just because I couldn't seem to get invested in the storyline.  And on top of that, every time I picked the book up I had forgotten what had gone on before, the story just didn't stick in my mind.
There is something happening, Odd saw it in a dream, but what oh what is it?  Man have we seen that storyline before, and it would be fine if he wants to keep up that premise, but that means there has to be a bit more development to Odd as a character, and he has turned out to be rather flat.  Oh so sad his girl is dead, oh so troubled that he sees dead people, his only ambition in life is to sell tires because it seems easy.  Really isn't it time for Odd to have some growth?  And in this book, I think Odd only saw one other dead person besides Frank Sinatra, whom he helped move on.  What famous singer will haunt Odd now?
I think Koontz tried to do something larger with the good vs. evil and Annemarie, but he just didn't make it.  It del choppy and incomplete.  There was too much vagueness, and what I assume Koontz thought was foreshadowing and not enough real story.  I think Koontz tried to hard, wanted to make what I assume started out as a fun story about a guy who sees dead people, into a larger, deeper story.  When he should have just stuck to a kooky book about a guy who sees ghosts, and left the deeper meaning of life to another storyline or another writer.