The Golem and The Jinni by Helene Wecker ✔✔✔✔

I had read about this book, but I thought it might be a novel cashing in on the interest in vampires, but when I saw it for sale at Costco for 10 bucks, I bought it.  I really enjoyed reading it - the golem is a Jewish mythological figure, like a robot, and made of clay; the jinni ( or genie) is a Syrian figure, made of fire.  This golem, although made of clay, is brought to life as a woman, who finds herself in NYC in 1899 - the jinni has been trapped in a silver flask for hundreds of years, and is released by a tinsmith who has been given the flask for repairs. These two unlikely beings find one another and strike up a peculiar friendship, even while struggling to adapt to a human world.  The golem never sleeps and never eats: the jinni cannot stand to be near water.  There are other fascinating characters as well, including Shaalman, the villain of the piece, and the creator of the golem who comes to New York City to find his creation.

I was going to suggest this for Book Club next year, but it's too similar to Night Circus, which was my choice last year.

Up and Down by Terry Fallis ✔✔✔

This is the third of Terry Fallis' books. This time the story is about sending a private citizen on a space shuttle mission, one Canadian and one American. I had a good few chuckles over this one - the plot is very simple, the characters are predictable - but it all works somehow for a light read.

Falling To Earth by Kate Southwood ✔✔✔✔

In March 1925, probably the worst tornado ever to hit the U.S. Killed over 700 people over three states. This novel's setting is Marah, Illinois, where everyone in this rural town loses something – a child, a house, a business – except the Graves family, who are miraculously spared. The children are at home with chicken pox, being looked after by their mother and grandmother. Paul is at work at his lumber business. Those at home find refuge in their storm cellar, while Paul hangs onto a telegraph pole. Their only mishap is that their car, parked in the driveway, is turned completely around. But the Graves family suffers irreparable damage, as the entire town, including Paul's best friend, turns against them – the children are bullied, those who buy lumber from Paul to re-build their homes, burn the lumber, Mae is ostracized by her friends, and is haunted by a woman who stands across the street from their home, simply staring at the house.  The Graves' have assisted in any way they can with those who have suffered, from allowing their front porch to be used as a temporary morgue, cleaning up the after-effects of the storm, making coffins, etc, but the townspeople cannot get past the fact that the Graves' lost nothing; they somehow think the family arranged this somehow, and are profiting from the losses of others.

This novel shows how people deal with these monumental disasters, and how the best of us can succumb to envy and bitterness. It makes one wonder, in this day and age, what happens to these very ordinary people after the cameras and the world's attention leaves. Would we act the same way?

Putting Away Childish Things - Marcus Borg

This has been on my shelf for at least two years, and I pulled this off as a possibility for our Study Group to discuss next year.  It's called a "didactic novel" because the novel form is merely a vehicle for teaching and discussing what the title suggests - looking at our faith and religion in a new light - an adult approach.  It's been very well done - Borg chooses  his setting in a liberal arts college where Kate is teaching the Enlightenment in a Religious Studies course, and his theme is different understandings of what it means to be a Christian today - how to understand Christianity in an Enlightenment and non-Enlightenment world.  Lots of room for discussion here.

After The Falls: Coming of Age In The Sixties by Catherine Gildiner ✔✔✔

I requested this book through Inter-Library Loan - I'm glad I didn't purchase it, because I didn't find it as engaging as Too Close To The Falls.  It certainly illustrates coming of age in the sixties, though - alienation from her father, teenage angst, discovering the facts of life in a thoroughly terrifying manner, trying marijuana, having her first relationship, her jobs throughout high school, her involvement in the Civil Rights movement, and later a brush with SNCC, the more radical group, the unhappy ending of a long-term relationship.

Her relationship with her father was probably the focus of the book, beginning with their move to Boston because of losing his business, his trying to deal with her discovering "boys", his later illness, with the necessity of her taking away his driver's license, and then his death.  Yet through it all, she has a high regard for her father, and her comments about the relationship between her parents indicates he was a good man, a good citizen.

There are some interesting stories - the party where she and a friend witnessed a gang rape through a closet door, her being sent to New York City to speak to various organizations about her prize-winning essay, as well as the incident which prompted the essay in the first place.  Just not as many belly laughs as the first one, and frankly some of her adventures were so "out there" I wondered if they were actually true.

We learned in her first book that her mother died of cancer, and this was never alluded to in this segment, so I'm assuming there'll be another memoir.  I'll read it - but maybe re-read the first one before I start it.

I Am My Father's Son - a memoir by Dan Hill ✔✔✔

Dan Hill was here in KL as part of our conert series, and I purchased this memoir there.  He is a great story-teller, and this memoir certainly illustrated that.  He has been tremendously influenced by his father - a charismatic rights activist - all his life, trying to live up his father's expectations as well as carving his own way in life, a path that didn't always meet with his father's approval.  His father was certainly a larger-than-life presence, and his mother suffered from depression, but Dan himself doesn't come across as being easy to have around either!  A good read, and I'll share it with others who attended the concert.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson ✔✔✔✔

A novel by Kate Atkinson is an item I don't hesitate to download to my Kindle.  I was hoping this would be another Jackson Brown detective novel, but instead it was a time-shifting novel, so I found it a ittle hard to get into, but I have such devotion to this author's writing that I kept reading, and was very glad I did.  I didn't know what was happening occasionally, because of the time shifting, but that's the way life is, after all.

I'm quoting from the book desription on Kindle:

"What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you got it right?
During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can draw her first breath.
During the same snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.
This is Ursula Todd, and her story of life after many deaths - a loop of lives, or the continuous circle of destiny - life after life after life."

The narrative unfolds around historical events in England from World War I through World War II - and Ursula's role in them. Especially interesting was her life as a warden throughout the Blitz of London - I had a little more trouble with her friendship with Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress, probably because of the way the reader is just airlifted, it seems, into the centre of the story.  But the book is well-written, and could probably bear another reading, if only to dissect her structure - it was extremely inventive - nearly every chapter is a new year, say 1910, then 1936, then 1926, and so on.  Events in one section are seen from a different angle in another section, or in another year.  It sounds tremendously complex, but Atkinson, a Scottish writer by the way, handles it very well.

Strongly recommended!