Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars is one of the best books I've read in a long time. You should read it too.

Fluke

Whales. Hawaii lingo. Boats. Marine Biology and Scientific method. Nautical political-awareness. Reunited lovers. Fictitious whale human hybrids... This book has it all.

Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings is an extremely funny novel centered around Nate the polite, Canadian, marine-biologist.  Nate is in Hawaii studying humpback whales, most specifically why they sing. I love whales, which is what attracted me to this book, and I unwittingly learned a lot about them.

As with all of Christopher Moore's novels (that I have read so far), the book starts with a logical and engrossing story. Once the majority of the characters have been thoroughly introduced and we learn fascinating little tidbits about them, the plot twists arrive in full force. I think this is one of Moore's best works.  It reminds me a lot of Coyote Blue in that it has wonderfully fleshed out (and likable!) characters, an excellent plot, a good amount of randomness all backed up by a heavy dose of research and some serious underlying themes.  I seriously considered going back to school to attain a degree in Marine Biology for at least a month after reading this.

Fluke introduces us to cetacean behavioral researchers, cooky Hawaiians, Naval "researchers", and researchers who will make the data show anything that the highest bidder wants.

What's New This Week

Here's the start of what may become a weekly post: a list of books newly published this week (books are published on Tuesdays usually). We haven't necessarily read them, but we're choosing the best bets.

Fiction

John Sanford's beloved Lucas Davenport is back investigating a devastating family murder in small-town Minnesota in Stolen Prey (Prey).

Steve Berry thrills in The Columbus Affair with a story of a journalist drawn into a conspiracy surrounding the real Columbus.

A freed slave returned to Virginia to spy on the Confederates during the Civil War; Lois Leveen imagines that woman's life in The Secrets of Mary Bowser.

A romance, mystery and bit of steampunk are combined in The Chemistry of Tears. 

Arranged finds a woman trying a marriage service.

Celebrities Galore!

A bevy of celebrities put their names to books this week.

Remember when Billy Bob Thornton was on Angelina Jolie's arm instead of Brad Pitt's? The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts is sure to be a wild ride inside Billy Bob's head. 

Adam Carolla promises to explain how he got to be an angry middle-aged man in Not Taco Bell Material. If your dad is an angry middle-aged man himself, you might want to put this on your short-list of Father's Day ideas.


Captain "Sully" also has a new book out, Making a Difference.

Non-Fiction

Rep. John Lewis remembers Selma, AL's "Bloody Sunday" 45 years later in Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change.

The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--And the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation remembers the Alamo. Another good bet for dads.

Buzz Bissinger writes about his two twin sons in Father's Day: A Journey into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son:one is a Penn graduate, the other has severe disabilities but also rare talents.

Jai Pausch writes about her experience while her husband, Randy, died from cancer and became famous for his own book, The Last Lecture.

One Shot at Forever: A Small Town, an Unlikely Coach, and a Magical Baseball Season is another good bet for Father's Day if your dad likes baseball stories with a side of inspiration.
 

Is there hope for Muslim societies in the Middle East? Bernard Lewis wonders in Notes on a Century.

DNA USA: A Genetic Portrait of America explores America's genetic make-up.

Sam Bracken had a terrible childhood that he overcame with football. He shares advice in My Orange Duffel Bag: A Journey to Radical Change.

Kids Books

Gilt (Royal Circle) imagines Catherine Howard's marriage to King Henry VIII through the eyes of her best friend.

Beloved author Garth Nix returns in A Confusion of Princes with a steampunk time-travelling romance.

Vampire Kisses continues with Vampire Kisses #09: Vampire Kisses 9: Immortal Hearts.

Danvers is still a middle school Muppet in Tales of a Sixth-Grade Muppet Book 2: Clash of the Class Clowns.

Bad Girls Don't Die hopes to be the start of a creepy series for teen girls.

The Cirque du Freak prequel series is coming to an end with Saga of Larten Crepsley #04: Brothers to the Death.

Lift-the-flaps on Winnie the Pooh: A Gift for Pooh starring the Disney Winnie-the-Pooh.

* * *

Finally, there's a new book out this week (that I shall not name) featuring many ridiculous claims about Obama published by a mainstream publisher that cares more about furthering conservative political causes than reality. As someone who worked in a bookstore during the first Swift Boat book release, I wonder if the people who buy these types of books can actually read. The people who bought the Swift Boat book could barely lift their knuckles off the ground to point their fingers at me, accusing me of being a stupid liberal for daring to work in a bookstore... Just keep that in mind when this book's scurrilous accusations hiding behind "free speech" become the talking points of Republicans.

What to Read After Hunger Games

If you're like us, after reading the The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1) you want to keep reading books like it. Here's what to read next after Hunger Games is finished.

Lots of books could be called dystopian - The Road, Fahrenheit 451, among many others - but The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1) broke new ground. It appeals to teens (and, of course many many other people) and stars a female. (Quick: think of a non-YA post-apocalyptic book that stars a female. One who doesn't generally act like a fainting Victorian lady. It's really difficult, right?) Cormac McCarthy and Suzanne Collins have different writing styles but lots of authors have produced stories like the Hunger Games recently. Here are what we think are the best of those books.

Published for Adults

We think a lot of great books are published for teens or kids. Adults should read, period. Read what you like; don't worry how publishers market it. Both of the following books are likely to be separated from the other Hunger-Games-like books because publishers call them "adult books." We think they're worth reading.

A nuclear blast fused people to whatever was closest at the time of detonation: a baby doll, a flock of passing birds, a younger brother. Now what remains of society is very clearly separated. The "have's" live ordered predictable lives; the "have-not's" live animalistically. If you're anything like us, you'll read Pure in one sitting. Somehow - despite children not being pitted in a contest to the death - Pure is more violent than Hunger Games. And there is a bit of a Luke-and-Leia moment. Among the qualities that make Pure a very worthy read are the world-building, plotting, and stark allusions to our own society.

Age of Miracles is narrated by an 11-year-old girl, placing her about 5 years younger than most recent dystopian protagonists. Nature is to blame for this world - the Earth spins more slowly, bit by bit, until humans begin to notice. How people react to the changes is what causes dystopia. This apocalyptic vision seems likely: the government doesn't react quickly and people struggle to maintain their normal routines until they become impractical and then impossible. But people's hearts keep beating and they must figure out how to continue on for as long as possible. For an 11-year-old girl that means worrying about friends at school, her piano lessons, and her parents' sleeping in the same bed. The Age of Miracles is a true examination of growing up, despite the environment.

Published for Teens

Again, the disclaimer: publishers market these books to teens, but what matters is that the stories are good. You might be an adult choosing books off the "kids" shelves in a bookstore, but why let that stop you from reading something good?

The influence of Hunger Games is clear when you begin reading lots of dystopian YA. Maybe there just aren't that many types of stories to tell in the sub-genre? Even if that's the case, we still liked the books below.

Life as We Knew It was published before Hunger Games and is unique. The world is bleaker and the teen girl narrator behaves like a teenage girl, not a mini-adult. She relies on her family as much as she relies on herself to survive a world made very bleak after a meteor pushes the moon closer to the Earth. Reading it, you hope you'd be as smart as the mother is. Children still behave like children here. Circumstances change them, but they still have teenage-ry emotions. Perhaps the youngest sibling should get the only meal of the day when food becomes scarce, but the olders siblings are still jealous and a bit angry. Susan Beth Pfeffer clearly demonstrates the role of luck in an apocalypse. We first experience this world rurally, away from the ocean, and you know those on the coasts and in cities are living very differently. In book two - The Dead and the Gone - and three - This World We Live in - you find out about those lives.

Delirium's dystopia is a world in which emotion is medically destroyed. Love is dangerous and prohibited. Society discourages falling in love but just to make sure, a medical procedure is performed when teens graduate from school. Of course, for a portion of teens, they fall in love first. What's stronger: love or societal obligations? Lauren Oliver writes page-turners. If you want to read about smart, head-strong teenage girls, read this. And, happily, you don't have to wait for the sequel (and you won't want to after the cliffhanger ending to book 1).

Matched (Matched Trilogy)'s society is similar to Delirium's: the government chooses spouses. True love is prohibited. Again, this teen girl narrator falls in love before her "match" is confirmed. #2 is already out: Crossed (Matched #2)

Divergent (Divergent Trilogy) is maybe Older Sister's favorite of these books after Hunger Games. Teens take a test that determines their skills and assigns them a career. Sixteen-year-old Beatrice, the test determines, could be anything - a dangerous assignment in a world where roles are everything. #2 is also already out: Insurgent (Divergent Trilogy #2)

In the Chemical Garden Trilogy #01: Wither world, medicine has gone awry. The younger generations - upon whom science experimented - die before 25. In these circumstances opulence thrives, at least for those who have the means. Boys born to elderly parents kidnap brides. Unsatisfactory girls are shot. Sixteen-year-old (yes, 16 is the magic age in these books) Rhine is kidnapped by a husband who actually loves her. He wants her to live out the remaining five years of her life inside his walled estate. But she loves the eunuch servant. Again, #2 is already out: Chemical Garden Trilogy #02: Fever

Across the Universe is for those who like a more sci-fi bent to their strong teen girl heroines in strange worlds. Amy's family boarded a spaceship in a medical coma-state expecting to awake on a new planet, ready to populate it. She wakes up centuries later but decades before the ship's arrival. Everyone she knew on Earth is long dead, her parents are still frozen, and the other people on the ship only know its artificial environment. #2 is out, but I haven't read it yet despite having had it on my bedside to-read list for about 6 months: A Million Suns: An Across the Universe Novel (Across the Universe)

Good Bets We Haven't Actually Read Yet

The following 2 books are also on my bedside to-read list. Other reviewers have thought they were good for Hunger Games fans, so I think they're worth mentioning too.
Under the Never Sky's teen girl must survive a wasteland.

Shatter Me (Shatter Me)'s heroine kills anyone she touches and thus is either jailed or a weapon.

What else have you read that's like Hunger Games?

Happy Mother's Day

Night Circus

I read Night Circus because everyone was telling me I would like it because I love Harry Potter. The similarities between the two stories start and end with their inclusion of magic. And the magic systems are different. Night Circus's plot unfolds very slowly. Instead of moving forward because of plot developments, the two main characters develop. And slowly. Lovely writing is not enough to enamor me of a book. I need a story that keeps me turning the pages. The two young magicians are in trapped in a magical contest-to-the-death, all unfolding in a gorgeous Victorian circus that never ages. I should have been invested in the characters' fates, but I wasn't. There's a death match and I didn't feel compelled to stay up late furiously turning pages. In fact, I ended up reading this slowly while I finished other books. And I finished it only because my boss (who is maybe the only person who reads more than me) loved it and re-read it. Which of course, is the point of reading: two separate people can react completely differently to the same book and that's part of the fun.

Delirium

Another trilogy about a dystopian future, in the vein of Hunger Games...  Yes, I know that there is a formula to each genre, but is it too much to ask for authors to show a little bit of creativity?

I've read the first two books (Delirium and Pandemonium) in this series. They are fun to read and I finished them really quickly but I couldn't help but find the whole premise to be utterly ridiculous.  I can't imagine America embracing the idea of a nation full of lobotomized citizens blundering around.  A lobotomy is the only thing that makes sense - the author describes the procedure that prevents human beings from contracting the disease of love as a brain surgery using needles and knives.

I work in medical research. According to current research, the part of the brain responsible for the sensation of love can be somewhat localized to the pleasure center of the brain (at least partially).  However, neurotransmitters play a huge role so the fictitious preventative surgery just doesn't make sense.  People in the book lose the ability to love, hate, and feel.  That sounds like a big old scrambling of the frontal cortex to me!

Still I see the appeal of the book. Without giving too much away, there is the required love triangle between the heroine and two boys, one of whom is slightly Peeta-ish...at least his hair is...

50 Shades of Grey

  Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades Trilogy #1) = 50 Shades of Awful! Where to begin with this book...

I first heard about it on the Today show. As Hermione Granger said: the best way to get people to read something is to ban it.  [Older Sister says: several libraries in FL have actually refused to carry the book or have removed it from their collections after seeing it reviewed.] I haven't been able to force myself to actually finish this book, so this review may be unfair, but when I started reading it I was struck by how ridiculously similar it was to Twilight.  [Older Sister here again: this book started as Twilight fanfiction. If you don't know what fanfiction is, you're mostly lucky.]

A klutsy pale girl living in the Pacific Northwest has never had a boyfriend but mysteriously has plenty of amorous would-be suitors. She works in a sporting goods store. Her ethnic male best friend is obsessed with her, and he is also her mechanic. Her mother is flighty and careless while her stepfather is monosyllabic and stiff. She loves to read books and write but not actually participate in life. She finds it hard to eat around the man she desires while he is weirdly obsessed with food. She has an old crappy car and her "boyfriend" insists on buying her a new one, as well as many other lavish gifts that she is uncomfortable accepting. She finds that his BREATH smells enticing (seriously). He warns her to stay away from him, he is trouble, he is no good for her.

The "best" part: he inducts her into a messed up and seriously abusive relationship.  I didn't mind the Twilight books until my 12-year-old students became obsessed with them and talked about how they wanted a boyfriend just like Edward.  I used to tell them, "having a boy stalk you, kidnap you, boss you around, tell you what to eat, wear, drive, who to be friends with...That is not love and it is NOT healthy."

I now have several friends who adore these 50 Shades of Grey books and I just want to have them committed.  All I could think about when reading this book was, "what the hell happened to him to leave him so damaged?"  He's psychologically ill, the type of person that makes you shudder when they are up on the witness stand, confessing to their heinous crimes.  You run in the opposite direction.  You do not stick around to be strung up on their ceiling.  And if that sounds like fun to you...you either have a latent desire to become a social worker and it's manifesting itself as an interest in traumatized and psychologically deviant behavior, or there is something seriously wrong with you too.

Also, the writing is terrible.

Book Suggestions for the Jewish Women's Book Club

By request, a list of suggestions for book clubs.

Some Favorite Book Club Picks

If you haven't read Room, you're missing a great book. There's plenty for discussion - if the mother, and not her child, told the story of their life in one room, this would be a very different book. The writing is very important but the plot is a page-turner. (Both sisters have reviewed this book: little sister's review; older sister's review.)


I love so much about The Snow Child. The author is an Alaskan bookseller who set her first book in frontier Alaska. She started with a Russian folktale about a child born from snow and turned into a story about marriage, parenthood, and love of a land. The paperback will be out in November.

Explorations of Jewish History

The Dovekeepers is widely considered to be Alice Hoffman's best. Don't expect the lightness of some her previous books. With this book she's imagining the lives of four women during the last days of Masada.


The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance is a memoir that started out as an exploration of how a family maintained their well-curated art collection through the generations. But it ends up being a microcosm on Nazi art thefts.


OK, technically No One Is Here Except All of Us is on my to-read list (starting it tonight, actually), based on someone telling me it was the best book he's read so far this year. It's a novel about an entire town trying to hide themselves during the Holocaust.


Perhaps an obvious choice The Book Thief leads itself to discussion. How responsible were German citizens for the Holocaust? I recommend reading this alongside another "children's" book that was published at the same time: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Israeli Authors, Translated

Etgar Keret writes awesome short stories. The Goldfiles sister loves The Nimrod Flipout: Stories best. Don't be scared that he writes short stories, they're all good and you will want to read them all. If you read the New Yorker (in which he sometimes writes), you can read Etgar Keret's books. His newest translation is Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories.


For a different writing style, David Grossman is highly recommended. You'll find some similar themes about the Israeli experience in To the End of the Land (Vintage International), but where Etgar Keret embraces the absurd, David Grossman explores emotions.

Missing Downton Abbey?

Nonfiction isn't always easy to read, but Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle is. Did you know that the real Downton Abbey family was involved with the search of King Tut's tomb? And that the actual Lady was an American Jew?


Unreliable narrators are rarely done well. The Lifeboat's untrustworthy narrator will lead to great discussion as will the plot. What would you do if you escaped a shipwreck only to find yourself stranded on an over-full lifeboat? This is also a great pick for those thinking about the Titanic's 100th anniversary or anxiously waiting the next season of Downton Abbey.

About the Immigrant Experience

American Dervish is the only book I've ever read that gets right the experience of being the child of an immigrant in America. We Goldfiles sisters are the daughters of an Israeli immigrant; the main character of this book is a Muslim child of Pakistani parents now living in the Midwest. For him, extremism in Islam is part of growing up and how that affects Jews is part of the story. The book is only in hardcover; The paperback comes out in September. 



22 Britannia Road is about a family separated, re-located, and re-found during and immediately after WWII. The writing is a bit literary but how the characters react to World War II is interesting.

I could recommend many other books but I'm stopping because this list has more titles on it than there are months in the year. (And I know this book club meets once a month.) Want more recommendations, for this club, another, or an entirely different subject? Feel free to email us at: goldfilesbookreviews at gmail dot com.