2003-06-25 12:30 p.m.
What I Read on my Summer Vacation
- American Fuji, by Sarah Backer,
about two Americans in Japan: one an English professor who lost her teaching
job and is now working at a fantasy funeral home, and the other a psychologist
who's come to Japan to find out how and why his son died. Funny and moving.
- Moneyball, Michael
Lewis' book about Billy Beane and the Oakland A's. This is a very fun read for
any baseball fan, but especially for A's fans who know the players and may have
seen some of the games described in the book. Some reviews have accused
Lewis of sucking up to Beane, but while Lewis is more openly critical of
players and owners, his portrayal of Beane seemed fairly balanced to me.
- Le Divorce, Diane Johnson's novel about a young American woman in Paris
and her sister, whose French husband has left her. I expected a fluffy little
trifle, but it had a bit more depth. Not so much depth as to make it a bad
beach read, mind...
- Wanderlust, a fluffy little trifle of an epistolary novel by Chris Dyer. Fun,
funny and with nothing deep or challenging to say, which makes it an ideal
beach book.
- Another Scandal in Bohemia and Cat in a Midnight Choir, both by Carole Nelson Douglas. The former is one of her Irene Adler novels, based on the character from the Sherlock Holmes story "A Scandal in Bohemia." The latter is one of her Midnight Louie novels set in Las Vegas. I prefer her Irene Adler novels because the character development is a little more interesting, her loathing of contractions sounds less stilted in historical fiction and the Midnight Louie books can get a little too anthropomorphic sometimes. (Midnight Louie is a cat.)
- Cut to the Heart, a historical mystery by (Ava) Dianne Day about Clara Barton.
The villain is a bit over the top, in that Patricia Cornwell evil serial
killer sort of way, but the research seems solid and it made me want to run
out and buy the biography Day used for a lot of her research.
If you like this, consider picking up one of Dianne Day's Fremont Jones series, about a woman detective in turn-of-the-20th-century San Francisco.