Lydia by Tim Sandlin

I admit it. I'm a sucker for brightly colored book covers. It may not make me read them but it usually makes me pick them up and read the jacket at least. This book is orange so I brought it home from the library. To add to the allure of the cover color was a blurb from Christopher Moore (whose books I love) mentioning how well Sandlin does comic fiction. There were a lot of things going on at once in the book. At one point you were following story lines stretching across two continents and a hundred years, and including a very odd road trip. Lydia is the narrator's mother, a feminist recently released from prison. She was captured after a decade on the run and convicted of trying to poison President Reagan's dog. (You've got to read it for all the salient details.) Community service is a part of her parole conditions and she ends up recording a centenarian's oral history to satisfy the requirement. His story alternates with what's happening in present time. Adding to the absurdity of the situation is a narrator runs a home for pregnant teens, a former hippie and psychopath hunting a main character and a visit to Lompoc prison. I liked the book and may eventually read more of his work.

The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern

Cecelia Ahern is a British writer who was chosen by Oprah's book club for another of her books. (I didn't know that until after I read this one, it may have stopped me if I had.) Amazon describes the Oprah book as a gothic thriller and this one is in the same vein. A spoiled Dublin teenager's father kills himself and leaves the family bankrupt. Sixteen-year-old Tamara and her mother are forced to move to the Irish countryside to live with her aunt and uncle. She knows immediately that strange things are happening but her life has changed so drastically that it takes some time to figure out what is going on. Her mother is almost catatonic with what she thinks is grief, her aunt hovers unbearably around them, her uncle is mostly absent and Tamara is left with the alien landscape of the country, the castle ruin nearby and a nun who lives in a small convent nearby and befriends her. In the midst of this she finds a blank journal in which she can read every morning what will happen the next day. The journal helps her solve the mystery and save her family. It's not nearly as strange as it sounds, but it does kind of read like a period thriller instead of something in the present.

A Covert Affair: The Adventures of Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS by Jennet Conant

This is another book I heard about on NPR. I loved the movie Julie & Julia, and it really gave me my first information on the Childs' life before she was a famous chef. I do think the book's title is misleading. My theory is that the author wanted to write a book about McCarthyism and anti-communist witch hunts targeting OSS agents active in the Far East during World War II, and specifically about a colleague of the Childs' from that time. The book feels like she pitched that to an editor and they said, no, not enough interest for a book there. I imagine her telling the editor "But Paul and Julia Child were there, and he was questioned about communist ties." I see the editor's ears perk up, and him telling her to put THAT in her book. Like Lost in Shangri-la, the book opens a window on life during World War II, especially women and how they participated in non-military roles in the Pacific and Asia. I'm glad I read two WWII books that dealt with the Pacific and Asia theaters because I was sorely uneducated in that area. The book also functions as a nice chronicle of the Childs' meeting, friendship, eventual courtship and life together. (I just think that should be an aside, not a subtitle!)

The Wolves of Andover by Kathleen Kent

I'm not entirely sure what kind of book Kent was writing here. It started out as fairly straight-forward historical fiction about a soldier turned royal executioner who fled to the English colonies in America, and mercenaries who attempt to find him and bring him back to England to face justice. The female main character meets the soldier who is now an indentured worker for her cousin. The book follows their rocky courtship and gives a detailed look at how people lived in colonial New England.

The one problem I had with the book is a scene about midway through it. It's as if it was dropped in for no good reason, and almost has a supernatural or dreamlike air to it. Within a chapter or two, I went back to re-read it in case I missed something. The writer then seemed to return to her original plan after that one scene and no more was said about it. The only explanation given was in the afterword where the author explained that some of the characters were real people and the female lead was later involved in the Salem witch trials.

So, my verdict: I liked the book for the historical detail but I feel like I may have missed something.

Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff

I wonder if you really need to write the book if you have a subtitle that long. I mean, it is fairly self-explanatory.

It's probably going to sound like I had a summer reading list focused on World War II (see A Covert Affair and The Soldier's Wife). I didn't do it on purpose, but they were interesting. I think I heard about Lost in Shangri-la on an NPR interview. The book followed two servicemen and a WAC who were the only survivors of a plane crash in the New Guinea interior near the end of World War II. The plane was on a sightseeing flight to see a hidden valley (dubbed Shangri-la by one of the first pilots to see it) as reward for their hard work and long hours. Zuckoff researched the background of both the victims and survivors and gave an in-depth portrait of their lives before, during and after the war. The crash survivors were incredibly lucky - not only did they survive the crash into the jungle mountainside when 21 of their compatriots did not - they also scavenged what they could from the wreckage, made it to a clearing where they were spotted and managed to take care of themselves until help arrived and a rescue plan was formulated.

At that time interior New Guinea was usually only accessible by air and even then, rarely. Hazards included the terrain, Japanese soldiers hiding in the mountains, lack of food and potable water and the unknown disposition of the native peoples. (They were rumored to be cannibals.) In addition to the historical research that the author did for the book, he also traveled to New Guinea and made his way to the village near the crash site. He interviewed some of the villagers who witnessed the crash and rescue, and the descendants of others who have since died. Zuckoff matched up what the survivors understood of the villagers' actions with what the villagers actually meant with their non-verbal communication. Anthropologically it's an eye-opening book. The Americans really didn't know how lucky they were. The rescue mission was a harrowing thrill - I can't imagine how it actually worked.