From One Book Lover

Secrets are central to The Round House , the latest  novel by Louise Erdrich . Haunting, revealing, educational and profound, Erdrich creates a world on the "rez" where the consequences for actions last generations. It's not a book I normally would have chosen to read; Native American Indian fiction can be both an amazing experience and a depressing morality tale. However, this story transcended any categorization I or any other readers may want to pin on it. Secrets play an important role in this book. Secrets are not all clandestine, residing unspoken in the open in a close-knit community. Other are as obscured as the people who keep them. All are revealed to a reliable, likable teenage boy who must decide what to do with the information he receives. Joe, also known by a rather comical and bizarrely loving nickname, is an incredible narrator. At once 13 years old and a wizened adult, he tells a story that's in present time as much as flashback and flash-forw...

I have a crowded nightstand. And that's not the half of it.  Hello, Goodbye, Hello — Truman Capote meets Peggy Lee, Peggy Lee meets Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon meets Elvis Presley... it's a chain of 101 meetings.  The book blends from one encounter to the next seamlessly with well-recorded conversations and comments from reliable resources: published accounts, diaries, third-party accounts, all verifiable, all more honest than one would expect. Winds of Marble Arch — A not-easily found collection of Connie Willis' short stories. (Well, some not terribly short. In fact, most I've read have been rather long. Not quite a novella, but certainly a long tale.) I like her, and I like her stories. I can't wait to see what bite-sized nugget (or substantial snack) comes next. Wolf Hall — I have both of Hilary Mantel's books in this trilogy. (The third one is in production.) I really like them: a little rambling, but one wants to be in the heads of her chracters...