Fervent Reader

Summary (from the publisher): Amazon’s business model is deceptively simple: Make online shopping so easy and convenient that customers won’t think twice. It can almost be summed up by the button on every page: “Buy now with one click.”

Why has Amazon been so successful? Much of it has to do with Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder, whose unique combination of character traits and business strategy have driven Amazon to the top of the online retail world.

Richard Brandt charts Bezos’s rise from computer nerd to world- changing entrepreneur. His success can be credited to his forward-looking insights and ruthless business sense. Brandt explains:

• Why Bezos decided to allow negative product reviews, correctly guessing that the earned trust would outweigh possible lost sales.
• Why Amazon zealously guards some patents yet freely shares others.
• Why Bezos called becoming profitable the “dumbest” thing they could do in 1997.
• How Amazon.com became one of the only dotcoms to survive the bust of the early 2000s.
• Where the company is headed next.

Through interviews with Amazon employees, competitors, and observers, Brandt has deciphered how Bezos makes decisions. The story of Amazon’s ongoing evolution is a case study in how to reinvent an entire industry, and one that anyone in business today ignores at their peril.

Liked:

• This book gave a straightforward and mostly chronological (after the first chapter, anyway) account of how Amazon.com rose from humble beginnings to become the world’s largest retailer. It was a pretty amazing journey, even in this Internet age that produces billionaires practically overnight.
• There was plenty of coverage given to Amazon’s business model and the various strategies the company used to expand and sustain growth through the early part of the last decade. I never really followed business news at that time (especially not for dot-coms), so a lot of the information in the book, while probably freely available online, was still new to me and had the added benefit of being compiled all in one place.
• I feel like there was just the right amount of information presented. It was neither so much that it delved into dry business talk that left me bored, nor so little that I felt the need to do my own research to complete the picture.

Disliked:

• The author wasn’t given access to Bezos despite numerous interview requests. While I can appreciate that this is hardly Brandt’s fault, it does detract from the book a bit. Yeah, yeah, there are plenty of other biographies or profiles where the subject wasn’t directly interviewed, but still… That’s just my personal feeling here.
• The book could have done with more analysis from Brandt. He mostly just laid out the facts without really talking about the larger implications of what was happening.

Rating:

One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com by Richard L. Brandt was a decent enough book for what it was: a brief, need-to-know look at how Bezos created Amazon.com and turned it into one of the most successful dot-coms still in existence. There’s not a whole lot of depth here, and most of the information can probably be found online, but instead of wading through Google for several days trying to come up with relevant articles, you can just pick up this book. I give it 3 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (from the publisher): Widely recognized as Willa Cather’s greatest novel, My Ántonia is a soulful and rich portrait of a pioneer woman’s simple yet heroic life. The spirited daughter of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia must adapt to a hard existence on the desolate prairies of the Midwest. Enduring childhood poverty, teenage seduction, and family tragedy, she eventually becomes a wife and mother on a Nebraska farm. A fictional record of how women helped forge the communities that formed a nation, My Ántonia is also a hauntingly eloquent celebration of the strength, courage, and spirit of America’s early pioneers.

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• This isn’t the kind of book that immediately grabs you with a page-turning quality; instead, it takes a few days for the wonder of the work to settle in. It was only after I reached the end that I realized what a wonderful journey I’d been on — right along with Jim Burden through his childhood and beyond.
• I liked that although Antonia didn’t have the glamorous future that she’d once aspired to, she turned out to have a happy life. Yes, she worked hard and never made it out of the small town, but she seemed completely fulfilled and content thanks to her children. Tiny and Lena may have been the more obvious, commercial “successes,” yet I have no doubt that Antonia was happier than those two lonely women.
• The first section that introduced the Shimerdas was by far the most interesting of the entire novel. Cather was best known for her portrayal of hardworking immigrants laboring on Nebraska farmlands, and that part of My Antonia was perfectly illustrative of Cather’s talents.

Disliked:

• I wish Antonia had remained the focus of the novel all the way throughout. She kind of dropped out of the story once she had her baby out of wedlock and went back to live with her parents and brother in shame. I didn’t really care about Jim’s college years or his reconnection with Lena; rather, I was just anxious to see what had become of Antonia.
• I would have preferred a more traditionally structured plot with clear arcs and more well-defined characters.

Rating:

I first read My Antonia by Willa Cather in high school, but decided to revisit it now to see if I could come to appreciate it a bit more now that I’m an adult. Although I’m sure I still missed a lot of the nuances and subtleties that make this one of the standouts of American Literature, I did end up enjoying My Antonia much more than I did when I was a teen. I give the book 4 stars out of 5.

The title of that post is a bit misleading. This list is a compilation of the best and worst books that I read in 2011, not of books that were published in 2011.

As usual, my opinion is just that and isn’t meant to be a final pronouncement about anything. My main goal when reading a book is to be entertained, so that’s how these titles were judged. If you want to debate or discuss the storytelling techniques of a particular author or the literary merit of a work, you’re definitely in the wrong place!

(Links go to my reviews.)

Fervent Reader’s Best Books of 2011

• Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
• Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
• A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• The Cider House Rules by John Irving
• One for the Money by Janet Evanovich
• The Final Detail by Harlan Coben
• Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe
• Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
• Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks
• A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard
• Through My Eyes by Tim Tebow
• Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn by Donald Spoto

Fervent Reader’s Worst Books of 2011

• How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One by Stanley Fish
• Stupid American History by Leland Gregory
• A Heartbeat Away by Michael Palmer
• Alexander the Great by Norman F. Cantor
• The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason
• Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
• Silence by Thomas Perry

Summary (from the publisher): Her name is synonymous with elegance, style and grace. Over the course of her extraordinary life and career, Audrey Hepburn captured hearts around the world and created a public image that stands as one of the most recognizable and beloved in recent memory. But despite her international fame and her tireless efforts on behalf of UNICEF, Audrey was also known for her intense privacy. With unprecedented access to studio archives, friends and colleagues who knew and loved Audrey, bestselling author Donald Spoto provides an intimate and moving account of this beautiful, elusive and talented woman.
Tracing her astonishing rise to stardom, from her harrowing childhood in Nazi-controlled Holland during World War II to her years as a struggling ballet dancer in London and her Tony Award–winning Broadway debut in Gigi, Spoto illuminates the origins of Audrey’s tenacious spirit and fiercely passionate nature.

She would go on to star in some of the most popular movies of the twentieth century, including Roman Holiday, Sabrina, Funny Face, The Nun’s Story, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and My Fair Lady. A friend and inspiration to renowned designer Hubert de Givenchy, Audrey emerged as a fashion icon as well as a film legend, her influence on women’s fashion virtually unparalleled to this day.

But behind the glamorous public persona, Audrey Hepburn was both a different and a deeper person and a woman who craved love and affection. Donald Spoto offers remarkable insights into her professional and personal relationships with her two husbands, and with celebrities such as Gregory Peck, William Holden, Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Robert Anderson, Cary Grant, Peter O’Toole, Albert Finney and Ben Gazzara. The turbulent romances of her youth, her profound sympathy for the plight of hungry children, and the thrills and terrors of motherhood prepared Audrey for the final chapter in her life, as she devoted herself entirely to the charity efforts of an organization that had once come to her rescue at the end of the war: UNICEF.

Donald Spoto has written a poignant, funny and deeply moving biography of an unforgettable woman. At last, Enchantment reveals the private Audrey Hepburn—and invites readers to fall in love with her all over again.

Liked:

• As far as “old-time” actresses go, Audrey Hepburn has always been one of my favorites (though I’ve only seen a fraction of her films). I absolutely loved her in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Roman Holiday, and My Fair Lady, and also appreciated Funny Face and The Children’s Hour. I never knew anything about her private life, though, and was glad to finally read a biography about her.
• Spoto’s book goes into great detail about the filming of many of her most famous movies. This was interesting to me because a lot of it was simply new information. Again, I’d never read anything about Audrey’s life before, so I didn’t know any behind-the-scenes gossip about these films.
• It was great getting some insight into why Hepburn was such an avid promoter of UNICEF later in her life. I had no idea that she benefited from the Red Cross and similar relief efforts when she was a child, and that she was essentially “paying it forward” later on.
• I can only imagine the heartbreak Audrey went through during her three miscarriages — especially since she so desperately wanted to be a mother. Yes, she did end up having two healthy sons, but I’m sure the miscarriages stuck with her for a long time.
• Audrey sounded like such a kind, graceful person who rolled with everything that came her way, refused to hold grudges, and generally tried to be happy and make those around her happy. She was sooo NOT a diva, even though at the height of her popularity she certainly could have been. And she didn’t let major disappointments, such as not getting to sing in My Fair Lady (after having been told that they would use her voice) bring her down for long. It seemed like she had a fantastic attitude.
• I loved reading about her relationship with Givenchy. Again, I knew that Audrey was linked with the brand, but I didn’t know there was a genuine friendship between her and Hubert de Givenchy that lasted until she died.
• There were tons of footnotes in the book, which indicates that the author did a lot of research. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is correct and that the conjectures he put forth are accurate, but at least there’s an opportunity for readers to cross-reference anything they feel like delving into a bit deeper.

Disliked:

• I didn’t really care to read about Audrey’s various affairs with her leading men. I get that this was a part of her life and all that, but it kind of changed my views of her a little bit. As naive as this sounds, she always seemed so fresh and innocent on screen, and I don’t like having that image tarnished.
• Ditto about her smoking 3 packs of cigarettes per day. Wow. No cause was given for the rare cancer that began in her appendix and ended up killing her, but no doubt the smoking would have eventually caught up with her too.
• Spoto could have been a bit more balanced in the presentation. It seemed like he spent an inordinate amount of time describing some films (Funny Face, The Nun’s Story), while briefly glossing over others. I understand he had to limit himself and probably didn’t have the same amount of source material available for each movie, but the imbalance was strikingly noticeable.

Rating:

I thought Enchantment was a very good biography of Audrey Hepburn. Granted, it’s the only one I’ve ever read, but it did what I wanted it to do. Namely, the book gave me interesting insight into her private life and acting career, and allowed me to see some of the humanity behind the public persona. Although Audrey wasn’t perfect, she comes off very well in Spoto’s account and is definitely worthy of my admiration. I give this book 4 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (from the publisher): Harry Bosch has been given three years before he must retire from the LAPD, and he wants cases more fiercely than ever. In one morning, he gets two.

DNA from a 1989 rape and murder matches a 29-year-old convicted rapist. Was he an eight-year-old killer or has something gone terribly wrong in the new Regional Crime Lab? The latter possibility could compromise all of the lab’s DNA cases currently in court.

Then Bosch and his partner are called to a death scene fraught with internal politics. Councilman Irvin Irving’s son jumped or was pushed from a window at the Chateau Marmont. Irving, Bosch’s longtime nemesis, has demanded that Harry handle the investigation.

Relentlessly pursuing both cases, Bosch makes two chilling discoveries: a killer operating unknown in the city for as many as three decades, and a political conspiracy that goes back into the dark history of the police department.

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• I thought the Irving case was built up in a pretty suspenseful way. I was anxious to learn if the death was indeed suicide or if it was a murder that had something to do with the father’s political dealings.
• I can’t believe Maddie is already 15 years old and helps Bosch with some aspects of his cases! I guess that’s to be expected, though. I can’t imagine Bosch’s daughter being a girly girl who would be Google searching prom dresses 2012 on her laptop instead of reviewing surveillance video with her dad. Oh, and the fact that she knows how to handle guns and now enters shooting competitions is pretty cool, too. I wonder if Connelly is planning to retire Harry and “continue” the series with Maddie in the lead role instead. That would be awesome!
• The twist about Chill being a serial killer with 37 victims to his name was grisly, but good. I certainly wasn’t expecting that at all.
• I really liked the way Chill was caught. He managed to escape detection all those years, but was ultimately undone by a single drop of blood that belonged to an ex-girlfriend’s child. The way Bosch and Chu went from Clayton Pell’s bloodstain to catching a killer was probably my favorite part of the entire book.

Disliked:

• I can’t stand Harry Bosch as a character anymore. I am just so sick and tired of his imperious, lone wolf ways that I have to start skimming whenever he interacts with his partner. Yeah, Chu was totally wrong to go to the LA Times with inside information, but would he have done so if Bosch had been treating him as an equal? If I were in Chu’s shoes and had a partner giving me orders ALL THE TIME without telling me the reason behind the tasks, I would get pissed and want to act out too. Harry has seniority and all that, but that doesn’t give him license to act like an asshole 24/7.
• I couldn’t keep up with all the changes of heart Bosch went through at the end of the book. First he wanted to use his influence with Kiz to get Chu transferred. Then he wanted to quit because he had been played and couldn’t see Irving’s death as the suicide it was. Soon after, he wanted to give Chu a second chance. And then immediately after that, instead of retiring for good he decided to ask for a full five years on his DROP (Deferred Retirement Option Plan). WTF???
• The relationship stuff with the doctor was boring and unnecessary.
• I just don’t enjoy the political angle that Connelly loves to insert in a lot of his books. Sure, in real life politics plays a huge part in what goes on within a big city police department. But I couldn’t care less about the fictional LAPD police chief, his assistant Kiz Rider, or councilman Irvin Irving. The stuff they’re trying to do to each other is tiresome and uninteresting to this average reader.

Rating:

My love-hate with Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series continues with The Drop. The book definitely had some positives that made it an entertaining read, but the bad points are ones that have become quite a trend with this author’s work recently and are becoming increasingly irritating with every installment. I’ll probably continue to read Connelly out of habit; however, he’s not a must-buy-on-release-day writer for me anymore. I give this book 3 stars out of 5.

Summary (from the publisher): James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back.

But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what hap­pened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in tur­moil. The unhinged assassin’s half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and left the wounded president as the object of a bitter behind-the-scenes struggle for power—over his administration, over the nation’s future, and, hauntingly, over his medical care. A team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. As his con­dition worsened, Garfield received help: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, worked around the clock to invent a new device capable of finding the bullet.

Meticulously researched, epic in scope, and pulsating with an intimate human focus and high-velocity narrative drive, The Destiny of the Republic will stand alongside The Devil in the White City and The Professor and the Madman as a classic of narrative history.

Liked:

• I wasn’t actually interested in President Garfield before reading this book, but was drawn to it by the great title. Fortunately, the content did not disappoint, and I think I learned a lot from Millard’s work.
• Garfield sounded like a pretty amazing individual, not so much for the “rising from poverty” aspect of his story (frankly, lots of folks did that back then and do that now) as for his intellectual capabilities. All the languages he mastered, becoming president of a university at the age of 26, etc. I can’t see a guy like that becoming president in this day and age.
• I enjoyed reading about the strong bond between Garfield and his wife Lucretia. He was clearly devoted to her and worried about her during her illness, and of course she couldn’t wait to be by his side after learning of the assassination attempt. I particularly liked learning that Lucretia used stationery with a black (mourning) border from the time of her husband’s death until her own. It showed that her love for him never flagged.
• The insight into Charles Guiteau (the assassin) was absolutely fascinating. He sounded like an utter leech right from the beginning, borrowing money from people he barely knew, skipping out on his boarding house debts, refusing to pay train fare, etc. How did someone like that even survive? It made me wish people had refused him money so he would have starved to death before carrying out his evil plan.
• The look at early 19th-century medicine was stomach-turning, to say the least. It’s hard to believe that cleanliness and hygiene counted for so very little back then and that doctors kept dried blood and pus from previous surgeries on their lab coats as “evidence” of their experience and competence. Wow.
• Unfortunately, I thought Guiteau had a bit of a point when, during his trial, he claimed that his bullet didn’t kill Garfield; the unclean practices and incompetence of the president’s doctors did. He was right. He still deserved to hang, of course, but those doctors should have been held accountable in some way.

Disliked:

• All the stuff about Alexander Graham Bell felt out of place in this book. I realize that Bell played a huge part in trying to identify the location of the bullet in Garfield’s body, but it wasn’t worth reading so much about his life (his booth at the World’s Fair, his history of teaching the deaf, his marriage). Save that stuff for a different book.
• Guiteau was clearly deranged, and his actions showed it. But I wish the author had delved more into the possible causes of his mental state. Was it hereditary, as his lawyer tried to argue at the trial? Were some of his problems the result of a Chronic migraine condition? Or was he just a religious zealot? I wanted to hear some more theories!
• Reading about the dirty dealings and crooked politicians of Garfield’s time showed me that nothing has really changed in that arena even after 130 years.

Rating

I found Destiny of the Republic to be a highly engrossing and fascinating read — particularly for someone who has never before delved into the subject of Garfield’s assassination. I’m sure there are other, more scholarly works out there, but Candice Millard’s book was just right for me. It was neither too long nor too academic, but it was still well researched and well presented. I give it 4 stars out of 5.

Here are the current New York Times Bestsellers in a handful of the more popular categories:

Combined Print & E-Book Fiction:
RED MIST, by Patricia Cornwell
THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett
11/22/63, by Stephen King
THE LITIGATORS, by John Grisham
THE DROP, by Michael Connelly

Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction:
STEVE JOBS, by Walter Isaacson
KILLING LINCOLN, by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
HEAVEN IS FOR REAL, by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent
UNBROKEN, by Laura Hillenbrand
BEING GEORGE WASHINGTON, by Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe

Hardcover Fiction:
11/22/63, by Stephen King
RED MIST, by Patricia Cornwell
THE LITIGATORS, by John Grisham
DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY, by P. D. James
KILL ALEX CROSS, by James Patterson

Hardcover Nonfiction:
HARDCOVER NONFICTION
STEVE JOBS, by Walter Isaacson
KILLING LINCOLN, by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
UNBROKEN, by Laura Hillenbrand
BEING GEORGE WASHINGTON, by Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe
JACK KENNEDY, by Chris Matthews

Paperback Trade Fiction:
THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, by Stieg Larsson
THE NEXT ALWAYS, by Nora Roberts
THE TIGER’S WIFE, by Téa Obreht
THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN, by Garth Stein

Paperback Mass-Market Fiction:
TOYS, by James Patterson and Neil McMahon
LAWE’S JUSTICE, by Lora Leigh
SMOKIN’ SEVENTEEN, by Janet Evanovich
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, by Stieg Larsson
THE LAND OF PAINTED CAVES, by Jean M. Auel

Paperback Nonfiction:
HEAVEN IS FOR REAL, by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent
THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, by Rebecca Skloot
UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIPS, by Jennifer S. Holland
THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE, by Max Brooks
OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell

E-Book Fiction:
RED MIST, by Patricia Cornwell
THE DROP, by Michael Connelly
THE LITIGATORS, by John Grisham
KILL ALEX CROSS, by James Patterson
THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett

E-Book Nonfiction:
STEVE JOBS, by Walter Isaacson
HEAVEN IS FOR REAL, by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent
KILLING LINCOLN, by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
CATHERINE THE GREAT, by Robert K. Massie
UNBROKEN, by Laura Hillenbrand

Plot summary (from the publisher): For Cassie Beaumont, it’s meeting her perfect match. Cassie, at thirty-three, wants a husband and kids, and so far, nothing’s worked. Not blind dates, not the Internet and certainly not leaving love to chance.

What’s left? A professional matchmaker. He’s Simon Dodson, and he’s very choosy about the clients he takes on. Cassie finds Simon a difficult, acerbic know-it-all, and she’s astonished when he accepts her as a client.

Claiming he has her perfect mate in mind, Simon assigns her three tasks to complete before she meets him. Three tasks that are all about Christmas: being a charity bell ringer, dressing up as Santa’s elf at a children’s party and preparing a traditional turkey dinner for her neighbors (whom she happens to dislike). Despite a number of comical mishaps, Cassie does it all—and she’s finally ready to meet her match.

But just like the perfect Christmas gift, he turns out to be a wonderful surprise!

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• I thought Cassie was a fairly likable protagonist. She wasn’t completely annoying or anything like that, and she wasn’t presented as Little Ms. Perfect, either. She had her faults and flaws, which served to make her more human.
• Macomber pretty much got right down to the action. This was a short book, so there wasn’t much time for subplots and tangents. Nearly every scene was productive and had some kind of impact on the outcome.
• The minor characters were decent. Usually, the best friend comes off as desperate or annoying, but I liked Angie. Ditto for the brother. It seems that nearly every romance book includes someone who is completely jaded when it comes to love, but the characters here were upbeat and positive without being unrealistically so.

Disliked:

• Who in their right mind would spend $30,000 on a matchmaker??? I guess Macomber selected that price to show readers that the stakes for Cassie were high, but all I could think of whenever Simon’s fee was mentioned was, “Think of all the other things you could do with that money!!!”
• The moment Cassie met Simon, I knew Macomber intended the two of them to get together. The author spent far too much time describing his appearance for it to be otherwise.
• I saw the Angie and Sean thing coming from a mile away, too. Oh, well, it’s not like I read these kinds of books for the suspense, right?

Rating:

The Perfect Christmas was my first Debbie Macomber book, and while I wasn’t exactly blown away, I did enjoy it to the extent that I’d be open to reading more of her work. This book had fun characters and a great atmosphere, and even made me laugh out loud a few times. It was kind of standard fare for the genre, so I give it 3 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (from the publisher): Three young women share a London flat. The first is a coolly efficient secretary. The second is an artist. The third interrupts Hercule Poirot’s breakfast confessing that she is a murderer—and then promptly disappears.

Slowly, Poirot learns of the rumors surrounding the mysterious third girl, her family, and her disappearance. Yet hard evidence is needed before the great detective can pronounce her guilty, innocent, or insane.…

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• At least Hercule Poirot was actively involved in this case. I like it when he actually interviews witnesses, views crime scenes, and sets subtle little traps for people. In the last few novels featuring this particular detective, he didn’t do a whole heck of a lot of investigating. He seemed back to form here.
• I liked that Christie acknowledged Poirot’s age in this novel. She admitted in at least a few interviews that she started him off too old, and then had to find ways to make him not seem as ancient as he would have been if his years unfolded as chronologically as the books. (If he aged in real time, he would have been close to 100 or more in this one!)
• I picked up on the painting clue almost immediately. I knew there had to be a reason it was mentioned so much, and I was right! Score one for me!
• I loved how much Christie made fun of the long-haired, dope smoking hippie youths of the day (the ’60s). Her observations were funny — probably because I share her opinion.

Disliked:

• The story was a bit hard to follow. It was also kind of boring at times, which made me pay even less attention than usual. As a result, by the time the answers were revealed, they made practically zero impact on me.
• The title of this book had me hoping that one of the main threads would be a love triangle direct from a romance novel or soap opera. I think that would have been much better than what readers actually got!
• Wait, was this yet another case of impersonation/fake identity?! Come on, Dame Agatha, I expect more from you than the same old ruse that you’ve used numerous times already!
• How convenient that Norma and the good doctor should run off and get married. It’s funny how Agatha Christie didn’t seem to lose her romantic tastes, even as she got up there in years.
• Since all these murders and whatnot were committed for money, I wish Christie had given the reader a general idea of how much was at stake. I don’t think a figure was ever mentioned. It was just hinted that the Restaricks were very wealthy.
• I still don’t like Ariadne Oliver, and thought she was particularly ridiculous in this one with all her wigs and stuff.
• Speaking of wigs, just how was it that Poirot put everything together simply from knowing that Mrs. Restarick wore a wig? It seemed like a pretty big leap to go from, “Oh, she wears a wig because it’s convenient” to “She wears a wig so she can pose as someone else and commit murder!” Spelling out the intermediary steps would have been helpful.

Rating:

Overall, Third Girl is an Agatha Christie novel that the author herself probably would wish erased from her canon. It just didn’t feel like a real Christie book in the sense that there was very little suspense along the way and most of the book was quite dull. Furthermore, the solution was a stretch and rather implausible. I give this one 2 stars out of 5.

Summary (from the publisher): After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens–as he later put it, “it was clear my people needed me”). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.

Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I’m a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man’s attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.

Liked:

• I know the reading public’s opinion on Bryson is pretty evenly divided into those that think he’s funny and those that think he tries to hard and falls well short of the mark. I tend to subscribe to the former belief, and therefore enjoyed many smiles and chuckles while reading this book.
• I think Bryson did a nice job of capturing the things that strangers to America would find odd, funny, or endearing. I studied abroad for two years while in college, and when returning home even after such a short time away, I noticed many of the same things that Bryson did. Having some of the same experiences as the author greatly increased my appreciation of the book.
• This volume is actually comprised of recycled newspaper columns that Bryson wrote for a British publication upon moving back to America. As such, each piece is a quick read presented in an easily digestible chunk.
• Some of my favorite essays include the graduation speech to a group of N.H. high school seniors; the one about the author dropping his oldest son off at college; the one about the often incomprehensible instructions accompanying computers and similar devices; and the several odes to small-town America that are sprinkled throughout the pages.

Disliked:

• Some of Bryson’s setups for the columns were so outlandish–and obviously contrived simply for the purpose of serving as an introduction–as to take me right out of the reading experience. Obviously not all of the things Bryson wrote about actually happened to him, and he clearly allows himself a great deal of poetic license when “retelling” certain events. I understand that, and am not asking for a purely factual account of incidents in his life. But still… the essays would have been much improved if the setups were just a bit more plausible.
• I didn’t like Bryson’s occasional forays into political philosophy, including his rant about the U.S. government’s stance on the illegality of drugs. If I want to read about politics, I’ll pick up a book by an analyst. I just wanted to be entertained here, not subjected to the author’s opinions on the law.
• Even though this book was short, the theme felt pretty played out by the time I reached the end. I think it had to do with Bryson portraying himself as a bumbling idiot who was completely overwhelmed by the tiniest obstacle. I mean, yes, there are a lot of ridiculous rules and regulations out there, but you don’t have to be a doofus to be befuddled by them. Was he just trying to be self-deprecating? I don’t know; but the shtick got old.

Rating: