The Thirteenth Tale

Title: The Thirteenth Tale

Author: Diane Setterfield

Pages: 406

Genre: Mystery

Grade: B

Synopsis: Margaret Lea is an amateur biographer who spends most of her time helping her father run their antique bookstore or reading.  Imagine her surprise when she receives a letter from one of the most prolific writers in England inviting her to come and write her story.  This writer, Vida Winter, has never really opened up to anyone and Margaret is afraid that Miss Winter will not tell her the truth either.  As she gets into the story, she realizes that there is a lot more to the story that Miss Winter is leaving unsaid.

My Review:  I enjoyed this book, but I didn't love it.  There were a lot of names and intricacies that I had a hard time keeping track of.  This may have also been due to the fact that I read the bulk of this book while spending time with family (Hi family, sorry I ignored you during Christmas...) and there were always lots of distractions.

From the Book: "(p. 58) I shall start at the beginning. Though of course the beginning is never where you think it is. Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then I was born.... Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole."

How to be Alone

Title: How to be Alone: Essays

Author: Jonathan Franzen

Pages: 278

Genre: Essays

Grade: B

Synopsis: This book is a collection of essays, all by the same author.  The essays cover a huge range of topics from the fate of the American novel to supermax prisons in Colorado and from the story of his short time as an Oprah book-of-the-month author to the workings of American post offices in big cities such as Chicago.

My Review: This collection was published in 2002 and I would be interested to read Franzen's writings on more recent topics.  His writing has a liberal slant (don't let that scare you) that gave me plenty of food for thought as I read.  Most of the essays were easy to read and didn't digress into too much babble, although there were a couple that could have been trimmed by a few pages.  I was reading this book during a late lunch break at Rich's Mighty Fine Burgers and Grub (which is one of my favorite SLC restaurants) and the cook that brought out my food saw me reading this book and mentioned that it was one of his favorite collections of essays.  Needless to say I was surprised.

Little Bee

Title: Little Bee

Author: Chris Cleave

Pages: 288

Genre: Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Little Bee is a refugee from Nigeria in Africa who has been a stowaway on a cargo ship and is now in a refugee detention center in Great Britain.  While in the detention center she learns how to speak the Queen's English and works hard to put the atrocities of the past behind her.

My Review:  This is a heart-wrenching book, with some disturbing parts that I won't soon forget.  Although a difficult story to swallow, I still enjoyed it and the writing was well done.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Author: Stieg Larsson

Pages: 644

Genre: Thriller

Grade: A-

Synopsis: Originally published in Swedish, this book is about Mikael Blomkvist who as a financial reporter got suckered into writing an article for which he was sued for libel and lost.  After taking a leave of absence from his magazine, he is hired to look into the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, who is the daughter of the very wealthy, long time CEO of the Vanger Corporation.  Blomkvist, along with Lisbeth Salander, a young genius hacker, take on the assignment of trying to figure out what happened to Harriet many years before.

My Review: Once again this was an excellent book to read while on vacation.  In fact, as I've purchased this book twice from the DI, I left a copy in Jamaica for the next traveler to enjoy. The story is engrossing and unusual, the translation into English is excellent and while the book is long, it was easy to follow along with the story.

Disclaimer: There's a lot of lovin' in the book as well as some rape/abuse, although it was mildly uncomfortable I don't recall it ever being explicit.

The Great Train Robbery

Title: The Great Train Robbery

Author: Michael Chrichton

Pages: 329

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Edward Pierce fits in well in high-society in Victorian England, while also being able to navigate the slums of poverty.  Pierce has a grand scheme to rob the train that is carrying the gold from the bank to pay for England's involvement in the Crimean War.  Over the course of many months he concocts a complicated scheme to get his hands on the money.

My Review: I'm not sure where I picked this book up, but it was the perfect book to read on a vacation (I did my reading in Jamaica).  It was fast-paced and easy to follow.  The details of the story have been filled in by Crichton, but the overall story is true and based on lots of testimonies from a court trial.