Muslim Women in America ***

*** Muslim Women in America: The Challenge of Islamic Identity Today. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Jane I. Smith, Kathleen M. Moore, 2006

With the exception of The Holland Suggestions, everything I've read so far this year has been a three star book. That's unusual, but nice for me. Maybe I'm getting better at picking a book by its cover.

When I co-wrote Hell in a Briefcase with Phil Little, I had to do a lot of research on the Middle East, the Palestinian conflict, Arab culture and terrorism. A couple of years ago I had an idea for a new project that would use a lot of that research, but go in a different direction. This lead me to begin researching the experience of American Muslim women.

Muslim Women in America is the fourth of fifth book I've read on the subject, and one of the best. It's only 164 pages, but it's dense. You won't just breeze through this one. If this subject is of interest to you, this book is worth reading.

River Rising ****

**** River Rising, Athol Dickson, 2005

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Literally and figuratively. Athol gets the first four-star review of the year, but more impressively, he won several awards with this book.

OK, let's get the annoying question out of the way right off the bat. Athol tells you how to pronounce his name. It's kinda like a person with a lisp saying basil, but without the 'B' on the front.

So, you're saying, what exactly does it take to get the coveted Four-Star Wunderfool review? I mean, if Russo didn't get it, who can? Here's what it takes:

Brilliant writing, a compelling story and unforgettable characters all mixed together into a book that is a must-read for anyone.

Russo came close. Really close. The only thing that kept him him out of the four-star level is the last four words: must-read for anyone. Straight Man is a little raw in spots for my tastes and I wouldn't recommend it to my mother. Still a great book, though.

But forget Russo. We're talking about Athol and River Rising. Up to now I've known Athol chiefly for his questionable movie recommendations. (I rented Ten Items or Less based on his recommend. My advice: miss it if you can.)

But fortunately for all of us, Athol is better at writing books than picking movies. Much better. River Rising has all the elements of a Four-Star Wunderfool pick in spades and passes the elliptical test with room to spare. Athol is a master. This is literature, pure and simple. I'm reading River Rising and thinking, "I want to write like this. It's time to take it to the next level."

The ending had just the right touch of reality and wistfulness. I was a perfect ending. I don't recall ever finishing a book and thinking, "Wow, that was exactly the best way to end this book." I have now.

Now I'll have to read the rest of his stuff. His newest one is up for the Christy. I haven't read anything by the other two finalists, although I did briefly meet Steven James at a film conference this year. If they asked, I'd tell them to not spend too much time working up an acceptance speech.

Fortunately, I doubt I'll ever have a book up against Athol in a competition. One of the advantages of learning how to write screenplays instead of cranking out more novels. Plus, I doubt we'd end up in the same category. Although why River Rising was in the suspense category for the Christy is a little puzzling to me. Great book, but not what I'd call a suspense novel.

Highly recommended.

Straight Man ***+

***+ Straight Man, Richard Russo, 1997

OK, I know, the plus is cheating, but this is better than three stars, but not quite the stop-everything hold-the-phone level. Pretty close, though.

Russo better watch out or he might replace Robertson Davies as my favorite author, just as Davies shoved Graham Greene to second place back a decade or so ago. Right now Davies maintains the lead because he's a dead white guy. Russo is merely a white guy.

As annoying as it may be to admit it, Snyderman introduced me to Russo. That guy has fairly unerring tastes so far. Like Davies, surely one day he'll fall off the pedestal.

This is the third Russo novel I've read, after Nobody's Fool and The Risk Pool. I haven't read the Pultizer Prize winning Empire Falls, yet, but I watched the Golden Globe winning HBO mini-series with Ed Harris and Helen Hunt, based on the book. I liked them all, but Straight Man is my favorite so far.

The incorrigible smartass William Henry Devereaux, Jr. is both infuriating and irresistable. This novel obliterated the elliptical test. More than once I checked the clock and realized I'd been exercising over an hour. Russo is a master at multi-layered stories buried in character. His recurring theme seems to be conflicted sons of dysfunctional fathers, explored from various angles in various books. He does it well.

Highly recommended.

The Shack *

* The Shack, William P. Young, 2007

It had to happen sometime. Our first one-star review of the year. I knew going in I wouldn't like this book, but I got it as a birthday present with the comment, "I'd like to hear what you think about it." So what choice did I have? I may be a jerk, but I'm not a complete cad. Yet. Give me time. I have a few years left in me. I might make curmudgeon of the year before it's over.

Lots of people love this book. Lots of people read People magazine. I'm not one of them, in either case. I'm not saying there's a correlation, here. Just mentioning some specifics.

Here's my problem with this book. It's a cheesy, schmaltz-laden story wrapped around a lecture on the nature of God.

If I want to read a good story, I want some really good writing. Life is too short to endure mediocre writing. Not everybody is as picky as I am. That's fine. Let them read what they like, and I'll do the same.

If I want to read a book on the nature of God, then I want a book that deals with the subject directly, not a 250-page third-rate parable with an angst-ridden character tossing softball questions to a sagacious character to hit out of the ballpark. Or three sagacious characters, either.

Actually, I got through the Foreword and thought, "Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this is a good book after all."

The Foreword was the best part.

I didn't subject The Shack to the dreaded elliptical test because I knew it wouldn't stand up and during a workout is no time to be playing around with an unworthy book.

When a book repeatedly refers to The Great Sadness, just like that, in caps and italic, you know you're in trouble. Like caps wasn't enough.

We really want you to get it, reader. It's not a sadness. It's not just the sadness. Or merely the great sadness. It's not even The Great Sadness. Dammit, we're talking about The Great Sadness here! Sit up and pay attention and have a hanky or three handy.

That's not to say that there aren't some good concepts in the book. There are. I truly believe that the world would be a better place if more people embraced the concept of God presented in The Shack. Most of it, anyway. But that's not why I read books.

Your mileage may vary.

Deadline ***

*** Deadline, John Dunning, 1981

The introduction indicates that Dunning wrote this in six weeks and, unlike his other books, sold it immediately without a single rejection. It's not hard to see why. It's a page turner, from start to finish, all 253 pages. Dunning mentions the coincidence of the similarity to the movie Witness, which came out four years later, but it is evidently just that, a coincidence.

Recommended for whodunit fans.

The Elliptical Test

Last year I started reading while working out on a NordicTrack elliptical. Reading while working out really tests the quality of a book. The workout, 40-60 minutes of steady, heart-pumping effort, is unpleasant enough. The book has to engage me to the point that I forget I'm working out. That's a tough standard. I'm not as forgiving of lazy writing when I'm sweating and gasping and looking for something to take me away from it. I keep a stack of books nearby because I am known to toss books that fail the workout test across the room.

Retribution ***

*** Retribution, Stuart Kaminsky, 2002

I twigged to Kaminsky back in the 80s with the Inspector Rostnikov series, the story of a Moscow police inspector who has to tread the delicate dance of Soviet politics to avoid Siberia or worse while solving crimes. Those are three and four star books. I followed the series through the breakup of the USSR and the new politics of mafia and gangs. It's a fascinating, incredibly well-written series, an example of taking the whodunit to the literary level.

So when I saw a Kaminsky novel while digging around through the bargain stacks, I snatched it up. Retribution, the second in the Lew Fonesca series, makes it clear that Kaminsky has not lost his touch.

Last year I started reading while working out on a NordicTrack elliptical. Reading while working out really tests the quality of a book. The workout, 40-60 minutes of steady, heart-pumping effort, is unpleasant enough. The book has to engage me to the point that I forget I'm working out. That's a tough standard. I'm not as forgiving of lazy writing when I'm sweating and gasping and looking for something to take me away from it. I keep a stack of books nearby because I am known to toss books that fail the workout test across the room.

Retribution not only made the workout endurable, it engaged me to the point that I went past the hour without realizing it. Now that's some engaging writing!

Highly recommended.

Embrace Me ***

*** Embrace Me, Lisa Samson, 2008

I always approach a Lisa Samson novel with trepidation. I love so much of her work that with each new book I wonder if she can do it again. How many times can she ring that bell that resonates down to the core? The truth is that no matter how many times a novelist cranks out a sterling piece of work, each new project is a new chance to fail, an opportunity to demonstrate that the well is dry. Staring at the blank first page of a novel is a terrifying prospect, no matter how many you have written or sold.

A while back I listed my top three Lisa Samson picks. Now I must revise my ranking. Embrace Me, the 10th Samson novel I have read, just claimed the top ranking. I'm reluctant to displace The Living End as #1, so perhaps I'll rank Embrace Me as #0.

I won't summarize the plot, as you can find that information anywhere. Instead I'll tell you my impressions.

Lisa never shies from the tough road less taken. She climbs inside the characters and claws her way out to a plot and a theme. Sometimes, as in this case, she climbs inside some bizarre characters, but it just makes the journey that much more interesting.

Lisa's novels are in first person, although sometimes from multiple viewpoints. Heretofore those viewpoints were always female. Embrace Me marks the first foray into a male viewpoint, which she credits Will (her husband) for assisting in refining. I won't say that she totally nails the male perspective, but she's close enough as to make no difference. Mark Andrus may have written in As Good As It Gets that for Jack Nicholson to write women, "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability." The only fault I'll attribute to Lisa in writing a man is that she may have not gotten shallow enough. Heh.

There are some startling revelations in Embrace Me that, in retrospect, I should have seen coming, but I didn't. This book knocked me out of the saddle more than once. The mercy is that, unlike The Living End, I didn't read it on the bus, so I didn't have to wear cheap sunglasses to preserve my privacy when it moved me.

Recommended reading.

To Say Nothing of the Dog ***

*** To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis, 1997

It's been a long time since I've found myself thinking about the characters in a book when I'm not reading it. That's what happened with this one. This book felt like PG Wodehouse meets Robert Heinlein.

The title is an allusion to a 19th century book, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). Before I was halfway through, I decided to get a copy of the 1889 book. After I finished, I went to the bookstore but didn't find a copy. However, I bought another book by Connie Willis. That should tell you something about how good she is.

Not surprisingly, To Say Nothing of the Dog was nominated for a Nebula award in 1998 and won the Hugo in 1999. But, before you write this off as a sci-fi time travel novel and give it a miss, which is exactly what I would normally do in that circumstance, let me tell you that it feels nothing like a sci-fi novel, so don't let that scare you off.

Strangely, although it was pretty clear from the cover copy, I somehow failed to realize it was written by a woman until I was 60+ pages in. I was surprised because the voice was remarkably like the dead white guys I'm so fond of reading.

This book has a lot going for it - a great plot, some nice puzzles, a gradual unfolding of the world of the novel and the issues at state, well drawn, memorable characters, and excellent writing. There were a few puzzles the characters seemed a little late to figure out, but even more things I was sure I'd figured out that I turned out to be wrong about.

Highly recommended.

The Best Kind of Books

I am addicted to words. As a kid, I read the dictionary. Seriously. It has shaped my writing and what I love about reading.

I am drawn to writers who are masters at the art of using words. There is nothing quite like a fine bit of writing, that sentence or phrase that seems to express the essence of a thing in a way that is at once fresh and obvious. In a way that makes you wonder why you never thought of it that way, because now that you’ve heard it, you can’t imagine a better way to express it.

Combine that with engaging characters and a nice plot, and you can’t lose.

Most good stories have the four main components of characters, plot, dialog and narrative. All are important, but they occur in varying degrees of presence depending on the type of book. For example, a spy novel might depend more on plot and less on characters. A travel book might rely heavily on narrative and have little or no plot. It may or may not have interesting characters, depending on who’s writing it and why.

Many modern readers are plot junkies. They want to keep the action going and are willing to accept two-dimensional characters that act according to type as long as the plot twists keep coming. A completely unforeseen surprise ending is the acme of this type of book.

For me, a really great book, regardless of type, is built around characters. The plot is simply what they do, the dialog simply what they say, the narrative providing the infrastructure in which they do and say those things.

Do you know any really clever people, fun to be around? It is fascinating how a mundane setting or experience can be transformed by such a person. I find it the same with books. If the characters are riveting, it really doesn’t matter what they do (the plot). If the characters are really well done, it might take you a while to realize there IS no plot! I once read a brilliant paragraph by Nabakov that described a screen door. A screen door, for crying out loud! Which has nothing to do with characters, but I just remembered it so I threw it in.

This is not to say I enjoy reading books about screen doors. I like a good plot as much as the next guy, and clever dialog can be a thing of beauty, even in the presence of formulaic plots, as Damon Runyon and P. G. Wodehouse have demonstrated.

In the end, for me, it comes down to the writing itself. Whisper a well-turned phrase into my ear, and I'll follow you anywhere.