"The Little Paris Bookshop' by Nina George

The Little Paris Bookshop, Nina George (3.0)

I ended up enjoying this book, though I had some serious reservations throughout. I was mostly dismayed by the premise: it begins with a man mourning the loss of a woman. His pain is so deep and sharp that he cannot enter the room she was last in and can’t even say her name (he writes it as _____). From this beginning, one imagines an old man who has lost his wife or partner of many years. My consternation comes a couple of chapters in when you realize he is 50 years old and the woman spent a total of 160 days with him and left him 20 years ago! Love may be deep – but that came across as ridiculous – a man wastes 20 years of the prime of his life for someone he had an affair with? Fortunately for the reader, the main character has a clever job (he is a literary apothecary who runs a bookstore on a barge in the Seine river) and the rest of the book has delightful characters. As an apothecary, he recommends books to his patrons depending on what he perceives they need. Readers will enjoy the book references. We follow his journey to finally process the mourning of his love and their relationship and it’s a colorful journey down the rivers and canals of central France.

'Hillbilly Elegy' by J.D. Vance

Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance (4.0)

I recently read that this book is now required reading for several high school classes. Hopefully it is in the sociology class as Mr. Vance, in this memoir, has summarized a little understood problem in today’s rust belt: why has the working white poor of ‘hillbilly’ culture had such a hard time succeeding in the middle class? He explains how his grandparents moved from the hills of Kentucky to an industrial town in Ohio. While they lived in a relatively nice neighborhood and had food on their table, their hillbilly culture remained with all discussions ending in shouting matches and perceived family slights being addressed with fists. While Mr. Vance’s mother was the salutatorian of her class, she became an addict and had many partners in her life. He describes their household instability in terms of her absence (physically and mentally) and the trail of men who wander in and out of their lives. Luckily his beloved grandparents brought stability and consistency into his life, they seemed to be anxious to improve on their parenting skills. Originally I had thought this would be a nature vs. nurture discussion, but he touches more on the depth of the culture and it’s impact on children. Specifically, he believes that the emotional and physical disruptions in the homes make it unable for these children to succeed. I think this is an important book to read to get insight into a growing problem in our country. Unfortunately I don’t seem much effort on either side of the political spectrum working to solve the root cause of the issue – how to ensure kids get the stability and support they need early on. This is exacerbated by the fact that the families don’t believe they need any support on that front.

'The Printing Revolution in Modern Europe' by Elizabeth Eisenstein

The Printing Revolution in Modern Europe, Elizabeth Eisenstein (3.5)

While I found quite a few interesting points made in this book, it was quite difficult to read. As one should expect from an expert on books and printing, every word and sentence was pithy and meaningful, thus I lost a lot of comprehension if I started to skim. This is an abridged version of Ms. Eisenstein’s more detailed research on how printing affected life in the 15^th century. After summarizing the initial changes, and introducing the establishment of printing shops, she discusses printing effects on three major cultural movements: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science. I found the most interesting points to be the simple ones: the effect on map making; the impact of the uniformity of punctuation, numbering of pages, etc.; the importance of annotation and cross-referencing on future authors; the increase in silent reading; and the enabling of a power to expand to an audience wider than the clergy. She emphasizes the importance of printing in that it ‘arrested, then reversed the process of loss, corruption and erosion’ in the previous forms of documentation. The first edition of this book was printed in 1984. It would be interesting to see a companion book comparing the printing revolution to some of our newer communication revolutions. The Afterword included in the second edition is quite defensive. You can tell that Ms. Eisenstein has spent many years defending her thesis from those wanted to make additional marks in printing history.

'The Sympathizer' by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen (4.0)

While not always enjoyable to read, I found this book important to read for two reasons. First it is a unique view of the past about a time that evokes mixed feelings for many Americans (the Vietnam War). As the ‘dominant culture’ (i.e. American), it’s one of the few cases where the losers have written much of the history.  This book is entirely from the point of view of a Viet Cong agent, amongst the southern Vietnamese and the Americans. Second, the writing is superb with a clever, wry protagonist as our main voice. Even the torture scenes were filled with creative language to invoke feelings and pictures. Here is a fictional story from the point of view of a Vietnamese man who poses as a Captain in the Southern Army, but is really a Viet Cong agent. He has been schooled in the US and returns with the refugees, including the General he supports. While the General tries to build a resistance to return to Viet Nam, our narrator keeps tabs on him while always remembering his true allegiance, to the revolutionaries. The last 25% of the book was the most difficult to read and the most confusing, but I believe that is the intention of the author. If you read this book, make sure to get the copy with the afterward by the author and the interview by Paul Tran. Both are enlightening to Nguyen’s thoughts.

'Star Wars: The Hand of Thrawn Duology', by Timothy Zahn

Star Wars: The Hand of Thrawn Duology, Timothy Zahn (3.0)

Like most ‘Star Wars’ fans, I generally find Timothy Zahn’s books to be the truest voices of the characters. Given that, I was disappointed in this two-book follow-up to his Thrawn trilogy. While the main characters are true to what you expect, and there were some interesting action scenes, the plot felt contrived. The idea that all the important characters would put themselves in grave danger in order to get a data-card with questionable information that might, just might, stop various New Republic aliens from fighting each other, seemed implausible. While I found the cloning aspects of the plot very clever, the overall Hand of Thrawn, once unveiled, was a disappointment. Overall, I liked the R. A. Salvatore books (Vector Prime) much better with their new and original antagonists.