Merry Christmas!

Book review: Inverted by Tom Ellsworth

The sixty-fifth and final book I read in 2016 was Inverted: Living Out the Perspective-Changing Parables Jesus Told by Tom Ellsworth. This book was the basis for a sermon series our new pastor preached, so I picked it up to go to the source.  Ellsworth examines eight of Jesus's parables, pointing out the twists that were shocking to their original audience but to which familiarity has dulled us today.

Book review: One Nation Under God by Kevin M. Kruse

The sixty-fourth book I read in 2016 was One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Created Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse.  I looked forward to reading this book for quite a while and unfortunately found it a complete disappointment due to its misleading subtitle.

The book promises to explain the post-war boom in church membership and civic religion by connecting it not to anti-Communism but to capitalism, particularly to corporate interests opposed to FDR's New Deal.  What is actually is, in fact, is a history of the aforesaid religious boom, particularly in regard to adding "In God We Trust" to US bills and "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance.  Without the subtitle, I wouldn't have experienced such cognitive dissonance as I tried to detect the nearly-nonexistent fingerprints of "corporate America" in the narrative; granted, I also would have been much less interested in reading the book, so score one for capitalism, I guess.

Kruse's narrative continually undercuts his assertion that the concept of the United States as a Christian nation originated among anti-New-Deal businessmen in the 1930s.  He openly admits that right-wing interests copied the playbook of progressives who had been promoting their own political ends under the aegis of the Social Gospel since the 1890s.  The proposal to amend the Constitution to declare America officially a Christian nation, by his own admission, had been kicking around Congress since the Civil War in the 1860s.

I kept waiting for the nefarious corporate interests to emerge and start manipulating religious organizations, but the best Kruse could offer was the National Association of Manufacturers being approached by an activist minister and lobbied for support for an anti-FDR movement which he had already launched and continued to run, which seems to me more like a religious organization co-opting the deep pockets of corporate interests.  How this is morally distinct from any other charity or political cause seeking underwriting from large business and wealthy donors, a process which takes place literally all the time, Kruse never makes clear.

Ultimately, this is a much less interesting story than advertised.  The 1950s did coincide with a huge upwelling of church attendance and membership,  a conflation of patriotism with Judeo-Christian theism, and massive popular support for religious observance, but Kruse's attempt to explain it all by reference to Depression-era businessmen falls flat.  The thesis, rejected by the author, that it was a reaction to "godless Communism" is far more convincing, particularly given that one of the rallying calls to add "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance was the assertion that the pledge didn't sound that different from one spouted by "little Muscovites."

A tidbit that stood out to me: Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, part of the court which struck down school prayer, was a deacon and Sunday School teacher for decades at a Baptist church while being an open agnostic.  If such was common in church culture at the time, it makes Sparky Schulz teaching a Sunday School class for years without either joining the church or, indeed, attending worship services more understandable (if still nuts).

Book review: The Charming Quirks of Others by Alexander McCall Smith

The sixty-third book I read in 2016 was the seventh installment in Alexander McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie series, The Charming Quirks of Others.  Isabel and Cat argue over their respective love lives.  A woman comes on to Jamie, because have we mentioned he's young and hot?  Isabel is asked, despite her complete lack of qualifications, to investigate three candidates for headmaster at a boys' school, one of whom, it has been insinuated in an anonymous letter, has a scandalous past.

Book review: But Where Is the Lamb? by James Goodman

The sixty-second book I read in 2016 was But Where Is the Lamb?: Imagining the Story of Abraham and Isaac by James Goodman.  It's kind of an odd book.  Ostensibly, it's an analysis of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac from Genesis, but Goodman opens the narrative by anachronistically assuming that the originator of the story knew he was writing for publication, knew he was filling in a gap in the already-circulating Abraham stories, wrote the story of the (near) sacrifice of Isaac, was dissatisfied with it, and was dismayed to find out that the story had already gone to print before he could tinker with it. I suppose it's an interesting conceit, but the author fills two chapters with a concept that is not only speculative but verifiably untrue.

From there, Goodman goes on to examine different readings, interpretations, and/or spins that have been put on the story from the intertestamental period (Jubilees and Philo of Alexandria) through the Holocaust (the sacrificing of innumerable Isaacs) to the present day.  The overarching consensus is that Abraham, as written, is the bad guy of the story for not choosing his child over his God.

Book review: The Lost Art of Gratitude by Alexander McCall Smith

The sixty-first book I read in 2016 was The Lost Art of Gratitude, the sixth installment in Alexander McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie series.  This book features the return of Minty Auchterlonie, whom I must admit I didn't really remember.  Isabel doesn't like her, but then, Isabel doesn't like so many people, it's hard to keep up.

Minty, seemingly oblivious to the other woman's dislike, asks Isabel to look into a series of harassing incidents, which she attributes to a discarded lover, but Minty has more and different motivations than those to which she admits.  In a far more interesting story line, Brother Fox, the sometime resident of Isabel's back garden is injured, and Isabel and Jamie arrange for veterinary assistance.

Book review: Deadly Valentine by Carolyn G. Hart

The sixtieth book I read in 2016 was the sixth book in Carolyn G. Hart's Death on Demand series, Deadly Valentine.  It marks the unwelcome return of Bryce Posey, and this time around Annie's mother-in-law Laurel is the suspect the necessity of clearing whose name precludes Annie and Max from washing their hands of the affair and letting the professionals handle it.

Book review: Much Ado About Anne by Heather Vogel Frederick

The fifty-eighth book I read in 2016 was the second book in Heather Vogel Frederick's Mother-Daughter Book Club series, Much Ado About Anne.  This time around, the book club is tackling one of my favorite books, L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables.

The mothers insist on a new member joining the book club: Becca Chadwick, class queen bee, Emma's nemesis, and villain of The Mother-Daughter Book Club.  It's an annoying development, not least because Becca spends most of the book trying to break up the friendships among the girls in the club and reclaim Megan as her own sidekick.  Also, former supermodel and present cooking-show host, the one-named Clementine (yes, really), is getting remarried, much to her daughter's dismay, and, Jess's mom having given up her soap opera career at the end of the previous book, their family now faces the possibility of losing their farm due to money troubles.

Book review: Moccasin Trail by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

The fifty-seventh book I read in 2016 was Moccasin Trail by Eloise Jarvis McGraw.  McGraw is best and justly known for her book, The Golden Goblet, and this is another historical children's story, this time set not in ancient Egypt but in the American West.

The main character is Jim Keath, a young man who ran away from his family's home in Missouri looking for adventure in the west and was taken in by Crow Indians.  Living in Oregon territory as a trapper, he receives a letter from his long-lost younger siblings, now orphaned and in need of their older brother who is old enough to claim a homestead for the family.

The story is wildly politically incorrect for the present day, contrasting the ways of the Native Americans with those of the white settlers and coming down in favor of the latter every time.  Jim has to reject his savage ways to become a responsible provider for his estranged family.  Given that, however, it's a powerful and exciting story of adventure in the American West.

Book review: Stalking the Beast by Howard Andrew Jones

The fifty-sixth book I read in 2016 was Stalking the Beast by Howard Andrew Jones.  Set in the world of Golarion, the setting of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, it's an adventure tale about a small holding in the River Kingdoms, a sort of lawless, up-for-grabs area of the world not unlike the early days of the American frontier, that is beset by a mysterious monster.  The local lord assembles a posse to track and kill it, just as a gunslinging bounty hunter arrives in town....

This is an exciting, if not especially unpredictable read.  The posse is whittled down one by one, as in any given action movie; the bounty hunter has, if not a heart of gold, scruples that leave the reader guessing which side she'll end up on.  If you have ever played Pathfinder, the supposed enigma of the mysterious beast is fairly obvious, leaving you only to wonder how long it's going to take the supposedly experienced protagonist to figure it out.

Book review: A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch

The fifty-fifth book I read in 2016 was A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch, another mystery recommended to me based on my previous reading.  It is the first in a series about an amateur detective named Charles Lenox, set in 1860s London.

Like Lord Peter, Charles Lenox is the younger brother of an aristocrat, in this case a baronet rather than a duke, which provides him with the wealth, social pull, and life of leisure necessary to the amateur detective.  In a near embarrassment of riches, he has a Bunter and a Watson: a resourceful valet whose personal loyalty is beyond question, and a dissipated Scottish doctor with a hobby of collecting obscure poisons and a flair for postmortems.  He also has a rival/uneasy ally on the force, à la Sugg or Lestrade, in Inspector Exeter, an ambitious if unimaginative policeman, and a romantic interest in Lady Jane Gray, who, despite the unreasonably historic name that no one ever remarks on, is no Harriet Vane.

If you're thinking that this cast of characters makes the novel sound a bit overstuffed, well, it is.  In my opinion, Finch would have done better to have introduced Lenox's various sidekicks over the course of the series rather than drop them all into the first book, fait accompli, although in fairness, I suppose he couldn't have been assured that the novel would be successful enough to spawn a series before its publication.  Lenox introduces his hero in medias res, having already successfully solved many cases, rather than on his first murder.  (In a fit of hubris, he even projects into the future with one character, telling the reader that he will again assist Lenox in a very important case years later.)

The murder victim in this case is of a maid in the home of a prominent politician, and the means is bella indigo, a rare and expensive poison which provides the title of the book.  The death is staged as a suicide, but neither Lenox nor McConnell are fooled for a moment, in stark opposition to the legal authorities.  Therefore, Lenox is forced to investigate sub rosa, in the face of both the police who are jealous of their jurisdiction and the politician who desires to avoid scandal.

I went back and forth on this book a bit and ended up with an opinion of it a bit on the negative side. The romantic angle is unnecessary and unbelievable: Lenox and Lady Jane have been friends since childhood, neighbors for most of their adult life, and have had a thing for each other basically always. There are no obstacles or misunderstandings that have kept them apart all this time, only the fact that the author wanted a romance in the book so ensured that nothing happened between them for twenty years.

In addition, Finch seems to have a hard time ending the story.  Once Lenox has delivered his summation to his admirers, the book keeps stumbling on for six more chapters, as those involved are brought to justice.  The main perpetrator meets a sort of poetic-justice comeuppance about which I'm not entirely sure how I feel, given that it seems rather callous to a minor character who gets the raw end of the deal all the way around.

I'll probably give Charles Lenox another chance if and when I find the second installment of the series at Half Price Books and see if Charles Finch's sophomore effort shows improvement.

Book review: A Man of Some Repute by Elizabeth Edmondson

The fifty-fourth book I read in 2016 was A Man of Some Repute by Elizabeth Edmondson.  It popped up as a recommendation, either on Amazon or Goodreads, in response to some of my recent reads, so I looked for it in Half-Price Books every time I was in one for several weeks before a copy turned up.

I was recommended the book based on either the Maisie Dobbs series or the Grantchester Mysteries, or possibly the combination thereof.    Like them, it is a mystery (this book in particular being the first of a series) set in early-twentieth-century England; being post-World-War-II, it shares a setting more with the Grantchester Mysteries than with Maisie Dobbs, who is between the wars.  If the first book is anything to go by, these Very English Mysteries should be far superior to either of the other series.

The protagonist is Hugo Hawksworth, a spy who took a bullet to the leg in East Germany and has been forced reluctantly to settle down to a desk job.  He is the sole guardian to a thirteen-year-old sister, Georgia, both parents having been killed in the war, and the two of them move away from London to the sleepy town of Selchester.  They take up temporary residence in the Castle, the home of the late local nobleman who disappeared on a stormy night shortly after the war.  Lord Selchester's daughter is champing at the bit to sell the family pile but, in the absence of a body, has been forced to wait seven years for her father to be declared legally dead before she can take possession of her inheritance.  Of course, the arrival of Hugo and Georgia is swiftly followed by the discovery of a skeleton beneath the stone floor of the Castle, and the missing persons case turns into a murder investigation, one all the more delicate because Lord Selchester was a member of the foreign office and Cold War politics come into play.

I have a few quibbles with the book.  The chapters are broken up into "scenes," which strikes me as odd.  A few of the minor characters feel like lazily drawn types straight out of Central Casting.  But the main characters of Hugo, Georgia, Freya Wryton, the dead man's niece, and Leo Hawksworth, a Catholic priest and Hugo and Georgia's uncle, are both likeable and believable.  The author leaves a few clues unsolved at the end of the book, presumably to lead into the sequel(s) and create a series that is less episodic than Maisie Dobbs or Lord Peter Wimsey.  I look forward to following her trail of breadcrumbs into the next installment.

Book review: The Mother-Daughter Book Club by Heather Vogel Frederick

The fifty-second book I read in 2016 was the first book in a series of tween-y novels, The Mother-Daughter Book Club by Heather Vogel Frederick.  The schtick is that the characters in the book read a girly classic over the course of a school year and life imitates art, as events in the girls' lives roughly parallel situations in the book they are reading.

The four girls are Emma, the overweight, bookish one; Jess, the smart one;  Megan, the popular girl; and Cassidy, the jock.  They alternate narrating the chapters.  Their mothers, who have no more in common than the girls do, are a librarian, an actress on a soap opera, an activist, and a retired supermodel (yes, really).  But they all take the same yoga class and come up with the idea of forcing their daughters into the titular book club.

Verisimilitude-wise, the series might as well be set in Sweet Valley, but I guess the literary tie-in gives it some educational value.  Over the course of their sixth-grade year, the girls (mostly under duress) read Little Women and slowly build (or repair) relationships with each other and their families.  There's a little too much focus on boyfriends for twelve-year-olds for my taste.

Book review: The Samaritans by Reinhard Pummer

The fifty-first book I read in 2016 was The Samaritans: A Profile by Reinhard Pummer.  Apart from the "good" one and the woman at the well, despite the prevalence of the Samaritans in first-century Judea, I knew next to nothing about them before reading this book.

Did you, in fact, know that there are still Samaritan communities in the world today?  I certainly didn't.  Historically, the Samaritans can be traced back to the people relocated into the northern kingdom of Israel after its defeat by Assyria.  According to the Bible, these transplants were savaged by a plague of lions due to their lack of reverence for the local deity until the king of Assyria returned an Israelite priest to the land to teach its new inhabitants the ways of YHWH.  The southern kingdom of Judah had long viewed its neighbor as heretical, due to the fact that they didn't worship in the temple in Jerusalem, and their replacement by "people from Babylon, Cutha, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim" (2 Kings 17:24) certainly didn't impress upon the Judahites to look upon them more favorably; hence, Jesus and the Samaritan woman could debate whether God was to be worshiped in the Jerusalem temple or on the mountain of Samaria.  Indeed, not long after the events of the gospels, actual violence broke out between Jews and Samaritans over the Jews passing through Samaritan territory to celebrate religious festivals in Jerusalem.

This is not the origin story told by Samaritans, however.  They trace their division from the Jews back to the time of the Judges, when Eli, recast as a villain in this telling, was priest at Shiloh.  According to the Samaritans, Eli rejected the true high priest at Mount Gerizim and led away a schismatic following to found his own heretical shrine at Shiloh.  The Samaritans consider themselves the true descendants of those who followed Moses out of Egypt and reject the books of the Old Testament after the Pentateuch. 

While there are some fascinating facts in this book, it is a detriment to the lay reader that it is written in academic prose.  In addition, Pummer's diction and style are quite stilted in places.  I wondered at first if the manuscript had been written in German and then translated to English, accounting for the infelicities of phrasing, but according to the author's biography, he teaches at an English-language university in Canada; given that there is also no mention of a translator, I must assume that he is merely a clumsy stylist. 

Book review: Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

The fiftieth book I read in 2016 was Vinegar Girl, a modern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew in the Hogarth Shakespeare series by Anne Tyler.  First of all, with the possible exception of Isabella's sudden command marriage at the end of Measure for Measure, there is no Shakespeare that has aged less well.  The gender politics on display in Shrew are violently unpleasant to the modern sensibility, and Tyler deserves respect merely for taking on the challenge of a modern retelling without subverting it by turning it from a comedy to a tragedy and the Petruchio figure from the hero to the villain of the piece.

Above and beyond that, however, Tyler deserves accolades not merely for tackling the story but for knocking it out of the park!  Vinegar Girl was one of the best books I read all year.  In this version, Kate is a twenty-something college drop-out, splitting her time between almost getting fired from her job as a teacher's assistant at a preschool for not being polite enough to the parents and taking care of the home she shares with her workaholic scientist father and remarkably pretty (and remarkably entitled) fifteen-year-old sister.  Petruchio is Pyotr, a Russian lab assistant working with her father on an important experiment whose visa is about to expire.  The obvious solution to Dr. Battista is that Pyotr should marry Kate and get his green card.

When Kate objects to marrying a complete stranger, her father is shocked that she could be so selfish not to make his scientific work a priority; after all, it's just a legality.  Pyotr, however, expects Kate to be his wife in more than name only, an eventuality that never occurred to the work-obsessed Dr. Battista who objects to his live-in housekeeper moving out; and Kate begins to see marriage to Pyotr as a chance to escape her father and sister and live for herself for a change.

Both Vinegar Girl and Shrew deal with a situation which was common in Shakespeare's day but is considered barbaric in modern American culture: the arranged marriage.  It is to Tyler's credit that she explores how such an institution can work, as it has at least as well as the love match throughout history and in some parts of the world today.  The slow warming of Kate toward Pyotr, who initially seems to display no attractive qualities but makes a real and touching effort to make a welcoming home for his new wife, is emotionally stirring.  Perhaps it is only because it's so rarely depicted, but I found the growing affection between two people who make an effort to be kind to one another more moving than yet another story of irresistible passion and immediate chemistry.

Book review: The More of Less by Joshua Becker

The forty-ninth book I read in 2016 was The More of Less: Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You Own by Joshua Becker.  Becker is a minimalist by both conviction and trade, running a blog/website on the subject.

Under the influence of Marie Kondo, I picked up this book hoping for more tips for decluttering.  Ultimately, however, I felt this book was a waste of time when I'd already read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.  Becker spends most of this book arguing why minimalism is a helpful philosophy and recounting anecdotes of people who have adopted it: he focuses on the why rather than the how, whereas I stand already convinced of the usefulness of decluttering but need bite-sized chunks of strategy to motivate me to get at it.

In the end, if you've already decided to downsize, Kondo's books are more helpful, as she provides a step-by-step method to get where you'd like to go.  If you want a infomercial for minimalism, go with Becker.