Misc

The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber. 2007, William Morrow. 466 pp Fiction

Jake Mishkin is an intellectual property lawyer, whose friendship with English professor Mickey Haas involves him in a literary puzzle featuring William Shakespeare, the rare book trade, and a cast of thousands. This thriller is a cross between The Da Vinci Code and a Garrison Keillor monologue. There is absolutely nothing straight-forward in the telling of this story, from the plot to the integrity of the characters.

Brave Men by Ernie Pyle. 1944/2001, University of Nebraska. 513 pp Non-fiction
Ernie Pyle recorded World War II on the day-to-day human level, from the standpoint of the citizen soldier. Brave Men is a collection of his columns for Scripps Howard Newspapers from the fighting in Europe during 1943-44. It gives an immediacy even now to the history of the war.

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice. 2006, Dutton. 352 pp Fiction
"I met Charlotte in London one afternoon while waity for a bus. Just look at that sentence! That in itself is the first extraordinary thing, as I took the bus as rarely as once or twice a year, and even then it was only for the novelty value of not traveling in a car or train. It was mid-November 1954, and as cold as I had ever known London." And so Penelope meets Charlotte, and her aunt Clare and cousin Harry, and gets to kiss Johnny Ray, and a host of other events. This is sort of chick lit set in the 1950s, a kinder, gentler, chick lit.

Pig Perfect: Encounters with Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them by Peter Kaminsky. 2005, Hyperion. Non-fiction
Kaminsky is off in search of the perfect ham. It takes him from Kentucky, to Burgundy; from North Carolina to Andalusia. He does barbecue and soul food and French cuisine (and shares a few of the recipes. He rails against the pork agri-business in the United States--and extols the wonders of what is often called heritage pork. Just reading this makes one hungry.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. 2008, Alfred A. Knopf. 333 pp Short Stories
This book of eight stories is just terrific. As in her book Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri's characters are often fish out of water, suspended between the familiar and the unknown or the uncomfortable. Even coping well with a new life doesn't always mean everything is well. There are many secrets here. I especially enjoyed the second story "Heaven-Hell".