TITLE

AUTHOR

COMMENTS

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Stieg Larsson

The third and presumably final book in the Millenium series by the late Swedish author Larsson.  A recent press report to the effect that someone has discovered an incomplete manuscript of a fourth book means that we will have to wait and see.  Like its two predecessors, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and the Girl Who Played With Fire, this is a real page-turner.  Make no mistake, this is not great literature, but the story is good enough to let you overlook the writing shortcomings.  The girl is the same Lisbeth Satander that appeared in the other two books.  She is a computer hacker who lives on the fringe of society and seems to attract trouble.  Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist about whom she is ambivalent, but who always seems to bail her out.  All of the loose end from the prior books, and the new ones generated here are all resolved so I for one hope that no one bothers to finish the incomplete manuscript. (07/10)

The Big Short

Michael Lewis

Lewis has parlayed a very short stint as an investment banker into a brilliant career as a writer.  No one explains the arcane world of high finance more clearly than he does.  This book looks in depth at the recent financial crisis triggered by the blow-up of the sub-prime mortgage market.  a deadly combination of greed, inattentive management and old-fashioned stupidity came very close to sinking the world's financial system.  My immediate reaction after finishing the book was an urge to cash out all may stocks and bonds and put the money under the mattress.  Lewis is angry because the very people who caused the crisis walked away with huge stacks of money.  You will be too.  (06/10)

Solar

Ian McEwan

There are flashes of brilliance in this book, but overall it is hard to recommend.  McEwan stakes out a position in the Global Warming wars by creating a character named Michael Beard, a reluctant leader in the Global Warming camp who has no apparent ethical code.  Beard is a Nobel Laureate who is coasting on his reputation.  In an interview that I heard McEwan recalled being at a function with a number of Nobel Laureates and found them to be a sorry lot.  all of the things he found objectionable in them are distilled into Beard.  the protagonist evokes no sympathy from the reader as the walls of his world close in. (05/10)

Too Big To Fail

Andrew Ross Sorkin

The near-death experience of the U.S. economy is documented in this page-turner that seems like fiction.  The oft-maligned Hank Paulson gets credit for decisive action which may have saved our economic system.  Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke were heroes as well.  It remains to be seen how this will all play out but we're still going. which was not a sure thing in late 2008.  There were many characters who brought the world to the brink who could have been portrayed as evil, but Sorkin avoids this trap.  Credit President Bush for having the good sense not to meddle and letting the experts do what they had to do.  (05/10)

The Girl Who Played With Fire

Stieg Larsson

The second in Larsson's posthumously published trilogy finds Lizbeth Satander in trouble again.  Fans of The Girl WIth the Dragon Tattoo (I am one) will find this even more exciting.  It begins slowly enough with Blomkvist returning to his magazine job and Lisbeth enjoying life in the Caribbean.  When three dead bodies are found, the pace picks up and never stops until the final paragraph.  Maybe this isn't great literature, but it is fun and will keep you turning pages well into the night. (04/10)

The Forever War

Dexter Filkins

New York Times war correspondent Dexter Filkins spent about three years embedded with several Marines unites in Iraq,  What sets this book apart and above all other books about the Iraq war is that Filkins does not step back to get a Big Picture or try to place the events he sees in a historical context.  He merely sees what the soldiers see and reports.  The pictures he paints are not pretty.  He lets the reader form his own opinion of what it all means.  My conclusion is that the troops are doing their best, but an occupying force is always going to be resented no matter how good the intentions.  In any event, this is a riveting read. (04/10)

The Long Fall

Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley is best know for his Easy Rawlins novels, but here he introduces a new and very interesting character, a private detective named Leonid McGill.  McGill's father was an ardent communist, naming his son after former Russian leader Brezhnev.  Perhaps rebelling against his name, Leonid becomes a formidable amateur boxer, a skill that comes in handy in his chosen line of work.  The plot is a little complicated, and there are too many characters to keep track of, but on the whole this is an entertaining book.  Not a candidate for the Nobel prize in literature, it is however better written than most works in this genre. (04/10)

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux is our generation's finest travel writer.  He is adventurous, observant, and his writing style is lucid and intelligent.  In this book he retraces a trip he took almost thirty years earlier.  Some of the things he saw earlier have changed and some have stayed the same. The places that have changed the most, India and China have not changed for the better as Theroux sees it.  They may be economic miracles, but they seem to be soulless. While reading most travel books, the reaction is that the reader would like to duplicate the trip.  In this one, no such desire ever arises.  None of his destinations are very inviting, but least inviting of all are the former Soviet republics.  Minister of Tourism in Turkmenistan would be a very challenging job. (03/10)

Game Change

John Heilemann  & Mark Halperin

There have been many books written about presidential campaigns, but this one stands out on information and entertainment value.  There are F-bombs galore as the contenders, including Hilliary, attempt to demonstrate their toughness.  Most of the candidates are shown to have positive and negative qualities except John Edwards who is seen the egotistical lame-brain he turned out to be.  The campaign stories are so well told that the writing skills of the authors can be overlooked.  This is journalism at its best. (02/10)

A Gate at the Stairs

Lorrie Moore

Moore is one of America's great story tellers.  She is best known for her short stories but here she shows she can sustain a story line over a lot of pages.  Tassie is a first year student at a thinly disguised University of Wisconsin.  She is totally aimless, taking a set of classes that lead to nowhere.  Needing money, she answers an ad for a part time nanny.  She is introduced to a very strange husband and wife who are on the verge of adopting a baby.  They both work so the need fo help.  The family has a secret which is revealed late in the book.  In the meantime, Tassie meets an unusual boy in one of her classes.  He claims to be Brazilian but tis is questionable.  After a rather bucolic beginning, this novel sucks you in.(01/10)