Catching Up..just for the record...

I have neglected the blog for many weeks. This entry is just going to catch up, and it will not give much detail about the very mixed bag of books I will mention. The bag is mixed as the new public library here in Cleveland Park is such a pleasure to visit, and I have taken to patrolling the fiction shelves and picking up books by well-known authors or authors whose names I have recently heard mentioned on the New York Times weekly book review podcast. And then there are the e-books from the library, which come shooting into my I-pad at odd times when my turn comes up.
So--let's just get into the list, with a few words about each book.

"Anything is Possible," by Elizabeth Strout.
I quote: "..lovely new novel is a requiem for small-town pain....you read Strout, really, for the same reason you listen to a requiem, to experience the beauty in sadness." The book is set in the mid-west, in small towns, and it consists of a number of longish stories that have rather tenuous connections with each other. This was the first of Strout's novels I have read, and I thought it was very well done--clearly she is a first-rate writer.

"Speak No Evil" by Zodinma Iweala.
This is an extraordinary book by a Nigerian whose first novel some years ago was about boy soldiers in West Africa--highly praised. This new novel (coming out after the author has qualified as a medical doctor) is about Niru, an adolescent of Nigerian parents (both doctors), growing up in Washington DC and attending a school that seems to be a cross between Sidwell Friends and St. Albans. He realizes that he is gay and has great problems with his conservative religious parents, who try to change his nature with religious indoctrination in Washington and back in Nigeria. None of which works. He has a friendly relationship with a girl, Meredith, who becomes the narrator in the second half of the novel. I would certainly recommend it, though I stumbled a bit (as did a reviewer in The Guardian) over dialogue that was unpunctuated, and often you didn't know who was speaking or if they were, in fact, speaking. But that is just a minor criticism.

"Gone Tomorrow," by Lee Childs.
I am almost ashamed to mention this book, which was I=Pad reading as I walked daily on the treadmill in the gym. I had heard a pod-cast in which David Remnick interviewed Lee Childs, who has apparently written a dozen books, and made a fortune, starring Jack Reacher---a big man, ex-army and some form of secret service, who travels the world with just a toothbrush, a wallet with a credit or cash card, one set of clothes, and in the first chapter something happens that draws him into a complicated plot--involving bad guys, detailed descriptions of weapons, fights, killings...you name it. Short sentences...never a semi-colon--who needs them? And apparently Lee Childs sits down each September the first and starts a new Jack Reacher, and he claims he has no outline. He finishes in March of the following year. It's easy reading, and it works well for reading on my I-pad when I am on the treadmill. Dare I say--I have just downloaded a second one. My justification?  Good enough for David Remnick's summer reading, then good enough for me.

"Train Dreams" and "Nobody Move" by Denis Johnson.
Having heard this author fulsomely praised, I took these two short books from the library.
A review of "Train Dreams" provides the following quote: "...it's a love story, a hermit's story, a refashioning of age-old wolf-based folklore....it's a small masterpiece." I read it in one sitting.
"Nobody Move" is much longer. I quote: "A short, tight crime noir, produced under a deadline for Playboy Magazine." There is a lot of wise-cracking dialogue, and the convoluted plot is difficult to follow. I am still not sure I understood what it was all about. But as the review said, "...you do keep reading." I did.
Johnson--unknown to me before these novels--is a very accomplished writer who won a Pulitzer Prize.

"Memories of a Marriage" by Louis Begley. I vaguely remember reading highly praised novels by Begley some years ago. I spotted this in the library and read it with interest. Philip, the narrator meets an old female acquaintance at the ballet in New York. She is in her early seventies and Philip has not seen her for years. Slowly, with talks with old friends and visits with her, he unravels the rocky progress of her marriage. I quote a review: "An engrossing novel that explores two different, often obscured, worlds. One is the private recesses of a couple's marriage: the other is high WASP society." Not a bad read: very well done.