The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes = 23 down, 77 to go

Classic
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
246 pages

Reading this book brought the same joy as watching a great episode of my one of my favorite crime shows (NCIS, Criminal Minds and Fringe). Now, I'm not a devoted student of classical literature, but I imagine that Sherlock Holmes was perhaps one of the first archetypes of what has become the ever-popular detective novels.

I have to say, though, that I enjoyed this book more thoroughly than many modern day crime/detective novels. There is a level of storytelling and character development that many of today's novels seem to treat superficially.

One assumption that I had was that Watson was more of a sidekick than a true contributor to the Sherlock Holmes storyline. Kind of like an Ed McMahon to Johnny Carson - just there for the comic relief. He is an interesting counterpart and a very necessary dichotomy, which is required for us to see and understand the Holmes character. Watson's recounting of Holmes and his unique approach to crime solving very much makes this book. It makes me strongly desire that I could be a fraction as observant and perceptive as Holmes is.

Here are a couple of passages that I particularly enjoyed:

He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned by the official police.

I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbours, but I was always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock Holmes. Here I had heard what he had heard, I had seen what he had seen, and yet from his words it was evident that he saw clearly not only what had happened but what was about to happen, while to me the whole business was still confused and grotesque.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland = 22 down, 78 to go

Classic
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
94 pages

I'm not sure how I escaped my childhood without reading this book - one that tells the adventures of a young girl who falls down a rabbit hole.

I enjoyed sharing Alice's adventures as she went from one to the other, interacting with characters like the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts (which seem to reflect some people that I know in real life).

I'm definitely looking forward to Tim Burton's adaptation of the movie due out later this year.

The Navy Justice Series = 21 down, 79 to go

JAG is one my favorite TV dramas, so I when I found this series - The Navy Justice Series - I was intrigued. It also didn't hurt that they were free downloads on my Kindle for iPhone app.

The books follow the trials and tribulations of Navy JAG officer Zack Brewer. He becomes the Navy's star prosecutor with his winning performances in two trials. The first is the result of three radical Islamic clerics who are members of the Navy Chaplain Corps being charged with inciting other service members to commit acts of terrorism. The second is against a Muslim Navy aviator who bombs the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, a Muslim holy site, as part of a worldwide plot by an Islamic terrorist network to create one united Islamic state in the Middle East.

All three book are good reads, though they didn't contain the depth of character that I typically prefer. The books also have a definitive undertone of Christian values, as many of the characters rediscover God as part of the storyline. I was halfway through book 2 before I realized that was a major point to the series. By that time, I felt that I was committed and wanted to see it through.

But these books portrayed Islam in a very negative light, which was completely unwarranted. For certain believers, I fear that these books could potentially reinforce existing negative perceptions of Islam - those that have already caused enough division and misunderstandings between Christians and Muslims. For that reason, this series disappointed me.

Just for the hell of it
Treason
Don Brown
325 pages

Just for the hell of it
Hostage
Don Brown
352 pages

Just for the hell of it
Defiance
Don Brown
336 pages








It seems additionally ironic that these books fulfill my "just for the hell of it" book genre. I wanted to classify them under "historical fiction," but that felt dishonest and not true to the mission of the original list.

Fireflies in December = 18 down, 82 to go

Historical fiction
Fireflies in December
Jennifer Erin Valent
362 pages

Jessilyn Lassiter finds the summer of her thirteenth year to be one of seemingly insurmountable challenges and tribulations. The book - which was a free Kindle for iPhone download - takes place in a small Virginian town in the 1930s where racism still runs rampant.

Her best friend, Gemma, is an African-American girl whose parents work for the Lassiters. When the parents die in a fire, Jessilyn's father takes Gemma into his home to be raised as if she were his own daughter. The result is hatred and consternation among the townspeople, who are unable to comprehend his actions. During a summer where she is growing up and coming into her own, Jessilyn finds herself caught up in suspicious happenings at ever turn, including a cross burning and a murder trial. Additionally, she spends the majority of the book believing that she killed a man when the KKK attack her home and she used her father's shotgun to chase them off.

The book does a good job of capturing the challenges faced by most 13-year-old girls. She can be stubborn, short sighted and unable to see the impact of her decisions on the situation and others. But she is a fierce friend to Gemma in the face of the threat of harm to them both. It demonstrates the power of love and loyalty in the face of hatred and racism by Gemma, Jessily and her parents. This quote - from which I'm assuming the book is named - captures our purpose in this world succinctly.

The light is bright enough to light up a little speck of the night sky so a man can see it a ways away. That's what God expects us to do. We're to be lights in the dark, cold days that are this world. Like fireflies in December.

Driving with Dead People = 17 down, 83 to go

Recommendation
Driving with Dead People
Monica Holloway
336 pages

This book is one of the many recommended to me by friend and fellow bibliomaniac, Robin. In the realm of books (and possibly life), she's never steered me wrong.

Monica Holloway led anything but a typical childhood. In a small Ohio town, she lived with a tyrannical father and a mother seemingly absent in all things mother. Monica's childhood and adolescence were filled with adventures that would make the basis a fun, lighthearted movie. Her best friend's father owns a mortuary, so they spend much of their free time running around the funeral home, laying in coffins in the showroom and similar mischief. When they acquire their driver's licenses, he throws the the keys to the hearse, and they get to cruise down to the Cincinnati airport to retrieve dead bodies.

The theme of death in her life continues as her father carries a movie camera in his car so that at a moment's notice, he can capture grizzly accidents or an extreme tornado. When Monica is around 6 or 7, she also reads about a girl her age that lives in her town (but attends the local Catholic school) that is run over by a motorist and killed. She becomes obsessed with this girl, and she pops up on a fairly regular basis in Monica's life.

Though not the typical childhood, you throw in a little death, and as its base, you have a very unique and differentiating childhood. However, she shares her fear, as well as her Mother's and siblings' fears, of her father, who is well respected in the community and owns the local hardware store, but extremely verbally abusive. Monica throws herself into school activities in high school and college, trains to become an actor and dates a long line of losers, including one that holds her at gun point when she tries to end their relationship and one that thinks she's attempting to entrap him when she becomes pregnant.

She's often keeping extreme depression at bay, just out of arm's reach, and after college, she learns what the primary catalyst from where her erratic and often self-destructive behavior originates. The catalyst is that her father sexually abused her older sister, for which the memories come flooding back to her sister as an adult. This discovery comes after Monica had actually made some peace with her father starting in late high school after her mother abandoned her for a college education and a new boyfriend.

This knowledge changes everything -- it puts many things from her childhood in perspective, challenges her on how to deal with/interact with each member of her family (from a brother medicating himself with alcohol and pot, to a middle sister who denies everything, to her mother who also denies everything and says she had no idea the abuse was occurring).

Through tenacity, and sometimes luck and a sense of humor that serves as a most excellent defense mechanism, Monica pulls through and eventually begins to build a normal life with an adoring husband and little boy.

In reading this book though, while you are often incensed by what has happened to her and her siblings, the storytelling is engaging and often uplifting. Towards the end of the book, she shares these poignant words that remind you that happiness is an action verb:

I'll always be damaged in a way. I had hoped that I could completely heal those cracks, but I'm starting to think the real trick is learning to live a full life in spite of them. Cracked people are everywhere, and so I can forgive myself for being overly anxious or easily frightened. But I will no longer allow myself to be swallowed by my past. I insist on having the happiest life I can muster, and I am in control of that now.

Eclectic List = 16 down, 84 to go

I have these four books that I should blogging about, but with the amount of time it's taking me to finish each entry, I decided it was time for a clean slate. I finished these books in November, so now as 2010 quickly approaches and I'd like to spend my days off reading instead of blogging, I'm taking the easy way out (hopefully, just this one time), and just listing the books minus the editorial.

Short Story
The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing
Melissa Bank
304 pages

Classic
Dracula
Bram Stoker
236 pages

Autobiography/biography
Mornings on Horseback
David McCullough
370 pages

Just for the hell of it
The Apocalypse Stone
Pete Earley
384 pages

Into the Wild + Into Thin Air = 12 down, 88 to go

A couple of years ago I read Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, which opens with the murder of a wife and infant daughter committed by the husband's two brothers. The book tracks the back story of the murder and its ties to Mormon fundamentalism, of which the brothers were practitioners and claimed they received direct orders from God to commit the heinous murders. The book also told the detailed history of Mormonism and the break off of the fundamental sects. The book was well written and researched, compelling and engaging. After I put it down, I didn't give a second thought to the author.

A couple of months ago while enjoying a bottle of wine with friends, Jon Krakauer's name came up while volleying book recommendations to one another across the table. His book, Where Men Find Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, was strongly suggested, as were a number of his other books. Once I realized it was the same author, I knew that I would read at least one book by him during my yearlong book challenge.

As I read two Jon Krakauer books back to back (because yes, they were that good!), I've joined them into this shared entry.

Recommendation
Into the Wild
Jon Krakauer
207 pages

After graduating from college, Christopher McCandless made a conscience decision to drop out of society, and he had one ultimate goal in mind -- living off the land in the wilds of Alaska, where his adventure eventually turned deadly.

The book details his journey across the United States, the people's whose lives he touched along the way and then his trip north to Alaska where he ultimately starved to death in an abandoned bus in the backcountry.

Krakauer does a brilliant job of not just telling McCandless' story, but also juxtaposing him against others who over the decades have checked out of mainstream society and taken extreme risks in a man v. nature approach.

To help the reader better understand McCandless' psyche, he tells his own story of an extreme mountaineering trip he took in his early 20s to scale Devil's Thumb:

The closest thing I'd had to human contact since the airdrop, the distant lights triggered a flood of emotion that caught me off guard. I imagined people watching baseball on television, eating fried chicken in brightly lit kitchens, drinking beer, making love. When I lay down to sleep, I was overcome by a wrenching loneliness. I'd never felt so alone, ever.

Other Nonfiction
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
Jon Krakauer
332 pages

Jon Krakauer was on assignment from Outside magazine in May 1996. He had been tasked with ascending Mt. Everest and writing about his experiences, as well as the commercialization over the years of Everest.

That climbing season though took a horrible turn for the worst when a sudden storm enveloped the world's tallest peak, leaving five hikers dead. This book was a very personal story for Krakauer:

Until I visited the Himalaya, however, I'd never actually seen death at closer range. Hell, before I went to Everest, I'd never even been to a funeral. Mortality had remained a conveniently hypothetical concept, an idea to ponder in the abstract. Sooner or later the divestiture of such a privileged innocence was inevitable, but when it finally happened, the shock was magnified b the sheer superfluity of the carnage; all told, Everest killed twelve men and women in the spring of of 1996, the worst single-season death toll since climbers first set foot on the peak seventy-five years ago.

Of the six climbers on [Rob] Hall's expedition who reached the summit, only Mike Groom and I made it back down; four teammates with whom I'd laughed and vomited and held long, intimate conversations lost their lives. My actions -- or failure to act -- played a direct role in the death of Andy Harris. And while Yasuko Namba lay dying on the South Col, I was a mere 350 yards away, huddled inside a tent, oblivious to her struggle, concerned only for my own safety. The stain this has left on my psyche is not the sort of thing that washes off after a few months of grief and guilt-ridden self-reproach.

Jon Krakauer is a powerful storyteller. These are two of most insightful books that I've read in a long time.