Red Side Story

Red Side Story (#1,221) is the sequel to Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey, but you can read this novel all by itself without having too much difficulty figuring out what happened in the first book.  Chromatacia is a land where your fate is determined by which color spectrum of light you can see, and how strongly you perceive that color.  The higher your sensitivity to it, the higher you are socially.

Eddie Russet is a strong Red, but he and his companion Jane Brunswick, a Green, are accused of murdering a Yellow while on an expedition for the Collective.  If they are found guilty (which they most certainly will be), it's off to the Green Room with them, where they will be executed by soporific exposure to Green.

Not only are Eddie and Jane not guilty, but their venture beyond the Outer Boundaries of East Carmine have raised many questions for the pair.  Things they've been told all their lives just don't seem to be adding up...  And just who is running the show?

Wildly imaginative, this book is provocative in its rendering of the social order (which is a literal thing in the book!)  It will make you think as you laugh at the improbableness of so many of the situations here.  Great fodder for a book club!

The Atlas Maneuver

Steve Berry's latest Cotton Malone thriller, The Atlas Maneuver (#1,220) is set in the mysterious financial world of bitcoin.  What would happen to monetary systems across the planet if one person decided to take total control?

As laid out in this novel, it's frighteningly plausible.  Things have worth if people believe they have worth is the lesson behind this book.  And it's surprising how ordinary a monstrous person can seem if they have proper distance between them and the strings they are pulling.  If you are a fan of bitcoin, or most decidedly not, you'll enjoy this caper.

West With Giraffes

There's a kernel of truth in the plot of West With Giraffes (#1,219) by Lynda Rutledge.  A pair of giraffes being shipped to the fledgling San Diego Zoo barely survive the Hurricane of 1938 on board their ship.  Once they arrive in New York City, there remains the problem of how to transport them across the country to the Zoo.  It's never been done before, but their journey keeps America captivated as war breaks out in Europe.

That part of the book is all true, but the characters and events that accompany Boy and Girl on their cross-country journey are fictitious.  Woody Nickel is a refugee from the Dustbowl disaster when he washes up in New York City.  He's never seen such a place, or such creatures as the giraffes.  He barely survived the storm himself and has no idea what to do with himself, but he wants to stay with those giraffes.  How he manages to make himself part of the crew moving them with one mishap after another makes for an engaging tale, and all seems to be going well for him until the Zoo man and the female reporter following them find themselves in Texas where Woody comes from.  Told from Woody's old age, the mysteries are gradually revealed. It seems he has a past, after all...

The Head That Wears The Crown

I have to admit, I was not expecting much from Mariah Stewart's recent novel The Head That Wears The Crown (#1,218), but I liked the diamond necklace and tiara on the book's cover, so why not?  I was very pleasantly surprised by just how much I enjoyed this novel.  

Annie Gilberti is just trying to make ends meet.  She's a divorced Philadelphia mother of two teens living a hectic life when she realizes that she is being stalked by a tall, dark and handsome man as she runs her Saturday errands.  He's there when she comes out of church the next day and asks to speak to her.  What could possibly go wrong?  It turns out Annie is the heir to a small Grand Duchy in Europe she's never heard of, but the people there want her to come back as their ruler.  So much history her Grandmother, the exiled Grand Duchess, never told her growing up!  With both her grandmother and mother gone, Annie is left on her own to decide what to do.  She feels she owes it to herself to check out San Gilberti.

What Annie does on her arrival makes for a diverting read as she becomes a positive force for good in her own life and that of her family, but also for the Grand Duchy of San Gilberti.  Yes, there's a romance, but that's a secondary plot line here as Annie discovers the best possible version of herself.  Yay, Annie!

The Iliad

The very first book I purchased to download onto my Christmas Kindle was Emily Wilson's translation of The Iliad (#1,217).  Since we were going to be visiting Troy amongst other ports on a cruise, what could be better or more atmospheric than reading the words of Homer as we glided across the "wine dark sea" towards the place where it all happened?  I'd never read any version of this classic work since the Classics Illustrated comic book version as a child.

Ms. Wilson's translation, as it turned out, was ideal for my purposes.  Her aim was to make the English poetry "sing" as it had in the ancient Greek dialects.  This is a work meant to be spoken, not just read, and it was hard sometimes to stop myself from disturbing everyone else around me with the rhythms of the verses.  Also, her introductory section sets up the work perfectly for the non-scholastic reader in providing context for the poem.  No wonder The New York Times named this particular translation to the top 100 books of the year when it came out several years ago!

With that said: Yikes!!!  There was so much sex and violence in The Iliad that I'm amazed that the Classics Illustrated folks even attempted to produce a kiddie version.  I think we tend to conflate The Iliad and The Odyssey, so to me it was somewhat surprising what didn't happen in The Iliad.  For instance, the Trojan Horse doesn't appear until The Odyssey.  And Achilles spends most of the poem pouting in his tent over a wrong done him by Agamemnon over a woman.  I've always thought of him as an action hero, but not so much here.  And to be honest, Trojan Hector wasn't much better.  The ancient Greeks did love their gossip!  It's wonderful to still be surprised by a classic that you think you know so well...

If you've never read The Iliad, there's no time like the present, but do yourself a favor and make sure you find Emily Wilson's translation.  You won't regret it.

The Source

I recently finished James Michener's epic novel The Source (#1,216) while traveling.  Set in Israel in 1964, this book was contemporary fiction when it was first published.  Although somewhat dated today, it is amazing how little has changed since then on the political front, and the quest for territory.  It is as relevant today as the day it was originally published.

The plot concerns an archaeological dig of a previously undisturbed tell, or mound, near the present day city of Acre.  Two exploratory shafts are sunk to bedrock, and the crew find sufficient artifacts to make the excavation site viable for at least a ten year period.  The plot switches back and forth between the tensions on the worksite and the neighboring kibbutz, and as each separate level of the site is exposed, an imagining of the lives of the descendants of Ur in succeeding time periods.  From the Stone Age to the British withdrawal from Palestine in 1947, each layer tells its own compelling story.

There is so much to explore here that my book club expanded its discussion to two meetings!

This is my first James Michener novel.  He was legendary for his research on his books, and I can tell you that I learned quite a lot as I read this fascinating book.  To really appreciate it, you'll need to devote a significant chunk of time to read it, but I think you'll find it's time well spent.