World of Kammbia

What happens when you fulfill one of your bucket list items?

Do you feel a sense of achievement?  Satisfied?  Surprised?  Disappointed?

Well, I can write that after reading Bag of Bones, I felt all of those feelings except disappointed.

Bag of Bones is the story of Mike Noonan, a bestselling novelist with a great life until his wife dies in an accident near their Western Maine summer home. From that accident, Mike’s life is turned upside down and inside out.

Because of that event, Mike gets writers block, discovers their summer home is haunted and has a connection to the town’s lurid past, and is caught in the middle of a family custody battle with a woman half his age that has a beautiful three year old daughter and realizes that he deeply loves both of them.

This is a moody, atmospheric story and it felt like I was reading aJohn Irving or Richard Ford novel with a huge paint splattering of Stephen King over the top.  Bag of Bones qualifies for the first literary ghost love story I’ve ever read.

One of the things, I really enjoyed in this novel was King’s ability to show the pressures of a writer trying to produce the next bestselling book:

“Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled onto the bestselller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books.

What the publisher wants in return, especially from an author who can be counted on to sell 500,000 or so copies of each novel in hardcover and a million more in paperback, is perfectly simple: a book a year.

Less than a book a year and you’re screwing up the publisher’s investment in you, hampering your business manager’s ability to continue floating all of your credit cards, and jeopardizing your agent’s ability to pay his shrink on time. Also, there’s always some fan attrition when you take too long.”

That section and the conversation with his agent was the most honest parts of the novel.  It felt like King wanted his readers to understand some of the burden he has being one of America’s bestselling novelists.

Moreover, I felt King wanted to show in this story the power of wealth and how it can control an entire small town. The good ol’ boy network and hate can make you do something that you will regret for the rest of your life and affect succeeding generations.

After reading Bag of Bones, I’ve learned that King is a gifted storyteller and I can see why he became one of our greatest bestselling novelists.  I know he is a polarizing author, but I believe he is a true talent and should be recognized as such.

I would recommend this novel an introduction to Stephen King’s work and also a good story to add to your reading bucket list.

Athol Dickson is becoming one of my favorite novelists.

Last year, I did a review for his Lost Mission novel and I throughly enjoyed it. Now, I’m doing a review for his latest novel, TheOpposite of Art. Also, he is the first novelist I’ve done a second review for on my blog.

The Opposite of Art is the story of the genius artist, Sheridan Ridler, who is known for painting nudes without faces. Ridler got quite a reputation in the art world as a cad to the ladies and an arrogant jerk to everyone else that came in contact with him.

Well, he has an accident at the Harlem River and that begins his spiritual transformation. However, the art world thinks the great artist is dead and Ridler’s paintings are worth millions. But there are reports that he’s alive and his daughter (whom he never met)from one of his models decides to search for him.

Because of her search, the daughter attracts another individual from Ridler’s past who wants to make sure the great artist is dead….and if not, stay dead.

In lesser hands, a story like this could have fallen victim to stererotypes and the spiritual transformation would have been a “Come to Jesus Moment and Now I Have A Get Out of Hell Free Card.” However, Dickson creates a story of intrigue, love, murder, family relationships, and the collision of art and faith. He goes beyond the stereotypes to produce a novel that has depth and reveals the honest struggles of someone trying to come to terms with their spiritual conversion.

Because of that, Dickson has become one of my favorite novelists.  He seems to understand that being a believer is not just about saying the sinner’s prayer, attending at church once a week, and singing Jesus loves and forgives me songs. A spiritual conversion affects every area of our lives and this type of fiction should reflect that and not simplify it for mass consumption.

In both novels I’ve reviewed, Dickson has given the Christian Fiction genre a fresh and honest perspective of what these types of novels should look like and he deserves to be mentioned with writers that preceded him like Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor, and Graham Greene who expanded the genre’s boundaries as well.

The Opposite of Art should be a must read for all serious readers and is one of the best novels I’ve read in 2012 so far.

White Butterfly is about a series of murders in the black community of Los Angeles in 1956. The police paid little attention to the murders since the victims were black women.  But, when a white stripper, Cyndi Starr, AKA The White Butterfly is murdered then everything changes. It turns out that she was a UCLA coed and daughter to one the city’s most powerful attorneys that finally gets the police’s attention.

At first, Easy Rawlins didn’t want to have anything to do with solving the murder of White Butterfly. He wanted to spend time with his new wife, the kids, and be left alone. However, when his best friend, Raymond “Mouse” Alexander is considered a suspect in the murder that Easy gets drawn in.

White Butterfly is a standard whodunit story with several interesting twists and turns that makes it a good, solid read. But for me, Easy Rawlins is the most compelling reason for reading the novel.

He is a character of surprising contradictions. Easy is a ladies’ man but adopts a Hispanic boy named Jesus and raising him as his son. He has a best friend who wants to kill anyone that crosses him but Easy prefers not to kill when solving a case. Moreover, most of the community where he lives is poor, but he lives comfortably and holds several pieces of real estate which becomes an interesting subplot in the novel.  Those contradictions are shown in good detail and takes White Butterfly beyond the usual mystery story.

Most critics of Walter Mosley have praised his authentic dialogue similar to Elmore Leonard. But, I will have to disagree with those critics. I felt the dialogue of Broken English distracts from the story and took away from Easy’s rich characterization. (Maybe, since I grew up in Florida and I’ve heard people talk like that all the time…that it didn’t nothing for me.) That was my main critique of the novel.

If you are looking for a good mystery with a colorful main character and an original setting then I will recommend White Butterfly for your reading pleasure.

Does a novel that is highly recommended live up to hype?

Well, I will attempt to answer that question in my latest book review of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

This novel has been one of the most talked about and most recommended by book clubs in the last few years.  I must admit I usually steer clear of novels like this…because I don’t want to be let down or have unrealistic expectations based off of the praise it has received.

However, I decided to read it because this novel received the most votes on my New Standards of Fiction List I posted recently.  Also, it was recently chosen as a book of the month on Goodreads and mentioned on several other book blogs I read regularly.

The Book Thief is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl growing up in Nazi Germany during World War II. Standing at her brother’s graveside, Liesel picks up a book called The Grave Digger’s Handbook and that beings her love affair with the written word. Her love of books is so great that begins to steal them in order to learn how to read and eventually write her own book.

The characters in The Book Thief are the heart and soul of the novel.  Beginning with Liesel’s foster parents: Hans Hubermann, the kind-hearted, accordion-playing foster father who does an incredible act of humanity that shows best of us even in the worst situations; Rosa Hubermann, the foul-mouthed, tough-as-nails foster mother who reveals a surprising side of her personality during the story; Rudy Steiner, Liesel’s best friend, whom I believe actually steals the novel from her; and Max Vandenburg, the Jewish man who becomes an integral part of Liesel’s life and is unforgettable.

I have to write that through three-quarters of the novel, I was let down from the expectations I had before I started reading it.  However, the last quarter of the novel and some unforgettable scenes throughout the book changed my initial opinion.

For example, one of my favorite scenes in the novel was when Rudy Steiner decides to paint himself black so that he can become Jesse Owens, the hero of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.  Considering that Rudy was a blonde German boy doing an act like that during the time of Nazi Germany was beyond crazy.  However, I thought it was a realistic picture of how kids can cut through barriers unencumbered regardless of the political or governmental backdrop that was happening at that time.

In closing, I wrote in my last review that The Opposite of Art by Athol Dickson was one of the best novels I read in 2012.  Well, I have to add The Book Thief to that list and I realized that something highly recommended can live up to the hype.

“Will my readers now, with their learning and their experience, tell me what is the truth, the whole truth?

Does truth lie in the everyday events, the daily incidents, in the pettiness and vulgarity most people’s lives are compounded of, or does the truth have its abode in the dream it is given us to dream to flee our sad human condition?”   {pp.297-298}

The narrator of this novel asks the reader one of the ultimate issues in being human.

What is truth?

Home Is The Sailor tells the story of Captain Vasco Moscoso de Aragao who comes to retire in the Brazilian beach town of Periperi.

Once he arrives, the sea-captain captures the community with tales of his great adventures at sea, romances with numerous women, and prowess as leader of one of Brazil’s great ships.

However, the town’s resident storyteller and gossiper, Chico Pacheco, believes the sailor has been lying about his status as a captain and sets out to prove his tales are nothing but a figment of his wild and hyperactive imagination.

As the story unfolds for the reader, you begin to see his colorful and interesting life reveal the truth about his status as a captain.

If you have never read a Jorge Amado novel before, I will highly recommend Home is the Sailor as an introduction to his works.  Even though this novel is considered a minor work in his bibliography, Amado deals with a major theme in a colorful, playful, lusty way that will put a smile on your face and make you laugh out loud as you are reading it.

I read this novel years ago (when I was in my 20′s) and decided to read it again now that I’m a few more years down the road. I enjoyed it the second time as much as I did reading the novel previously.

Well, Home is the Sailor has made my top five novels list and I will enthusiastically recommended it to anyone as such.

Have you ever read a book that you knew instantly you should have read years ago?

I knew it after reading the first chapter of The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.

I was working at a mom-and-pop bookstore in Santa Fe, NM in 1996 when this novel was published. I remembered the sales rep from Random House promoting The Sparrow at that bookstore and how he believed that readers would be talking about this book long after they read it.

Of course, it was the sales rep’s job to promote their publisher’s books and their objectivity could be questioned as the sales reps were more concerned about the bottom line then the quality of the novel they were selling to these small independent bookstores. Nevertheless, I’ve came to this novel a decade and half later (better late than never) and realized that sales rep was right in his prediction.

The Sparrow tells the story of Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit priest, who leads a first contact mission to the Planet Rakhat. However, he returns to Earth as the only survivor and is blamed for the mission’s failure. The priest reveals his side of what happened on the mission to his father superiors of the Catholic Church in Rome and undergoes a crisis of faith that becomes more apparent by the end of the novel.

The characters are what makes The Sparrow a great novel. Russell creates real, three-dimensional characters that will remain with you long after the story is finished.  Actually, my favorite characters of the novel were Anne and George Edwards. They were liberal, agnostic, and Emilio’s best friends. Their relationship develops throughout the story and shows how the author did an excellent job of not sugarcoating their differences with the Edwardses’ non-belief in God and Sandoz’s belief in God.

There is a scene in the novel where Anne, a doctor, wants to blame God for letting one of their comrades (another priest) on the mission die while she did everything she could to save his life. That scene was raw and unforgettable as anything I’ve read in contemporary fiction.

The only issue where I could be critical of the novel is in the density in explaining the trip to Rahkat. I could see for non science-fiction readers it might be a bit boring and seem like a “info-dump” in which that genre is known for.  However, Russell does an excellent job of not letting that density slow the pace of the novel.  It is woven into the plot very well and doesn’t take away from the rest of the novel’s strengths.

This is a thoughtful, moral work of fiction and proclaims itself being just as effective as a book of theology or a run-of-the-mill sermon at your local church in showing how faith can be shaken under difficult circumstances.

I haven’t been excited and saddened by a novel like this in a long time. Excited by having read it and saddened by finishing it and wanting to read more.

I will give The Sparrow my highest recommendation to be read by all serious readers. Also, I will add it to my favorite novels list.

Welcome aboard…….The Sparrow!

I was asked recently what’s my favorite novel.  I must admit I didn’t have to think long or hard about it.

I told this person it was David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

Oddly enough, I had to read Dickens in Middle School and absolutely hated it.  But as an adult, I really enjoyed reading David Copperfield.

David Copperfield is the story of his journey from boyhood to manhood. Everything David goes through in his life strengthens his character as he is trying to develop a disciplined heart.

He has to deal with the death of his mother, an abusive stepfather, a best friend who turns on him, a love lost, and eventually discovers true love and happiness from an unexpected person.

Through all these experiences, David grows and matures into a man. But, realizes the heart can’t be tamed.  While I would disagree with that somewhat…the power of Dickens’ story and the cast of characters (like the evil Uriah Heep, and the good-hearted, but financially challenged Mr. Micawber) pulled me into the novel immediately.

Dickens admit in his preface to the novel, “Of all my books, I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield.

After reading it, I could see why this novel was his favorite and that’s one of the reasons it has become my favorite too.

Queen of Angels by Greg Bear has been a book I’ve wanted to read for years. I’ve seen it at used bookstores and bought it several times intending to read the book but never get around to it until recently.

Queen of Angels is an ambitious, thought-provoking science-fiction novel that deals with race, crime, religion, and nanotechnology to ask the question what is the nature of the self and can man conquer it?

However, it would be easy and simplistic to write that man cannot conquer his own nature without God. But, Bear makes an ambitious attempt in the Queen of Angels.

The novel is basically three stories in one. It starts with Emanuel Goldsmith, a famous poet in 2047, who kills eight students at his apartment. All the evidence points to his guilt and the L.A.P.D. and the Selectors, a vigilante group, are looking for him.

But, Goldsmith is kept in hiding from them by his publisher, whose daughter he killed along with the other students at his apartment. The publisher is obsessed with why the poet would kill those students without any remorse and also is dealing with the pain of losing his daughter.

The publisher has Goldsmith examined by Dr. Martin Burke, a psychiatrist, who has developed the ability to enter a person’s thoughts. Dr. Burke created a device call the Country of the Mind and when he enters Goldsmith’s brain to determine the how and why of what he did. What the psychiatrist discovers is shocking and I felt were some of the most disturbing parts of the novel.

Meanwhile, there is an AXIS Robot who is reporting a major discovery from Alpha Centuri’s Planet B-2 that will change the face of science forever and will coincide with the people of Earth who are getting ready to celebrate the coming of the Binary Millennum. But, it is not what the scientists thought it would be and deals with a radical discovery from a computer.

Moreover, the L.A.P.D. sends Mary Choy, a detective, to Hispanola (a futuristic Haiti-Dominican Republic) to find Goldsmith who supposedly fled there because of his friendship with the country’s dictator, Sir John Yardley.

When Mary gets to Hispanola she will uncover something that will make her reevaulate who she is and learn about man’s inhumanity to man disguised as a utopia.

Bear intertwines all the storylines pretty well. But, there were some awkward moments (mainly because of the author’s ambition more than anything else) and he leaves out punctuation and normal sentence structure reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy.

I’m glad I finally read the Queen of Angels and while Bear doesn’t fully convince me in his ambitious case to show man’s attempt in conquering his own nature. I like the fact that he wanted to ask the question….Who am I?

Back in the late 90′s, I worked for Borders Books in Albuquerque,
NM for almost three years. This was the time in my life where the reading bug hit me tremendously.
During that time, John Grisham was at the height of his popularity at
the top guy in the Popular Fiction market. With books like The Firm, Pelican
Brief, and A Time to Kill were all big sellers in our store. I had decided I
wasn’t going to read him.
I had a caught the Retail Bookseller’s Attitude towards anything that
was accepted by the mainstream. I wanted to fit with my co-workers and I thought I needed to be snobbish to be accepted.

Moreover, I was a hypocrite because at that time I’d read a Dean Koontz
novel every week. Plus I was reading a lot of Science-Fiction and Fantasy as
well. Go figure.
Now fast forward to 2009, I had found out that John Grisham became
a Christian and this novel, The Testament, was the first book he wrote after
converting to Christianity. I was intrigued to say the least.

Well, I’m glad I read my first Grisham novel. He knows how to tell a story. I’ve never had much interest in the legal profession but I was in The Testament and I found the profession somewhat interesting.

Okay, what is The Testament about?

The Testament begins with Troy Phelan, a billionaire, who wrote his last
will just before he kills himself by jumping out of his own company headquarters building.

Well, Mr. Phelan lived a colorful, eccentric life. There were three
ex-wives and six children all wanting to get their hands on his eleven
billion-dollar fortune.

But, Mr. Phelan had planned everything well with his lawyer, Josh
Stafford. Mr. Stafford read his will to the family and their lawyers and Mr.
Phelan decided to give his entire fortune to another daughter no one knew about named Rachel Lane.

Rachel Lane was a missionary living in the Pantanal Jungle in NW Brazil
amongst the indigenous people for years. Josh Stafford sends Nate O’Riley, one of his lawyers, down to Brazil to find Rachel and her sign the will and claim her inheritance. Sounds simple so far!

Not so fast!!
Well, Nate O’Riley just got out of rehab for alcohol and drug abuse. He
has gone through two marriages, lost contact with his children, and was on his last rope as a lawyer.

Nate arrives in the Pantanal and finds Rachel Lane after a harrowing
adventure. Rachel doesn’t want the inheritance and refuses to sign the will.  He leaves the will and returns to Washington D.C. convinces that Rachel is a different kind of woman because she won’t accept the inheritance.

The story takes some shocking twists and turns on how they will settle
Mr. Phelan’s estate. I must write I really like Grisham’s characters and I felt
a sense a realness from each of them. Even the minor characters. Also, this is a story of redemption and how faith can change lives.
Moreover, how money can ruin people as well. Lastly, that Mr. Phelan how lived a God-less life could see something in his daughter who gave up everything believe and follow Jesus.

This is a novel that should be read and I tip my cap to John Grisham!

I have added Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin to my favorite novels list along with David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, The Testament by John Grisham, and Home is the Sailor by Jorge Amado.

As you can read after that paragraph, I will be writing a favorable review of Winter’s Tale.

How could I not?

Winter’s Tale is a novel about early 20th Century New York City. It’s a love story, a moral story, a time travel story, and a story of redemption all wrapped together.

The novel begins by telling the story of Peter Lake. He is a vagabond and burglar trying to make a life for himself in the great city. His life changes when decides to burglarize a wealthy publisher’s home and sees a woman while he’s doing his job.

But instead of robbing the home, Peter falls in love with this woman whom he finds out is the daughter of the publisher of one of the two major New York City Newspapers of that time, the New York Sun.

Peter finds out that she is dying of a disease and wants to live her last days with him in love and happiness.

Moreover, the novel revolves around the transformation of New York City as it progresses. We get to see the city go through many changes as time marches into the future.

These two storylines intertwine to show a depth that balances fantasy and reality into a beautiful novel.

I enjoyed reading names of his characters like: Reverend Overweary, Pearly Soames (one of the main bad guys in the novel), Craig Binky, Cecil Mature, and Asbury Gunwillow.

Those names had a Dickens-like quality and made me appreciate how fiction should stretch the boundaries of the mundane and take your imagination into a new place. I truly believe that this quality is lost in a lot of modern fiction.

It was really refreshing to read Winter’s Tale and I understand a few years ago it was named one of the best novels for the past 25 years by the New York Times Book Review.

I know that this type of accolade could set-up future readers for a big let down. But, I have to write that this novel deserved that type of accolade and all the recognition it has received.

Please pick up a copy of Winter’s Tale and let yourself enter a world where fiction is not only real, but fantastical and moral as well.

What is Christian Fiction?

One of my favorite blogs, by author and pastor, Mike Duran, attempts to answer that question in one of his most commented posts on the blog.

http://mikeduran.com/2011/05/why-christians-cant-agree-about-christian-fiction/

I will highly recommend you checkout his blog and I promise will it make you think.

With that in mind, I believe Athol Dickson’s Lost Mission is an excellent example of Christian Fiction is and can be.

–A woman from Mexico decides leave her home and come to America to convert everyone into becoming Christians.

–A minister fresh out of seminary decides to start a ministry amongst an illegal alien community in Southern California.

A rich Christian man whose wife left him for his church’s Sunday School Teacher and lost his daughter in a car accident decides to build a Christian city to shelter its citizens away from sins of the secular world.

Three Franciscan priests from the late 1770′s along with Spanish explorers in Southern California decides to convert Native Americans into becoming Catholics.  Well, one of the priests creates a painting which connects them to the present day.

All of these elements come together in Lost Mission. I won’t give it all away, but there are some interesting questions that the novel tries to address.

It is more authentic to be a poor Christian than a rich Christian in order to advance the kingdom of God?

If you decide to follow God’s call and it looks like everything you tried turned out to be a failure, do you still believe that God called you?

Can Christians protect themselves from the world’s influences by building their own cities?  And is that a wise thing to do?

What is the best way to go about converting people from paganism?  Is it by force from exploration or conquest?  Is it by befriending them and incorporate some of their customs?  Or is their another way?

Lost Mission doesn’t give any easy answers to those questions the author addresses in the novel.  I deeply appreciate that and it made the story more authentic and believable.

My only quibble with the novel was transition between the past and present story lines.  But, once I got the hang of those transitions it didn’t bother me as much.

This is a fascinating read and highly recommended. I believe Lost Mission shows what Christian Fiction can be at the highest levels.

That was the scenario for Bel Canto by Ann Patchett.

I heard her interviewed on the Book Lust podcast last year and the host was asking Ms. Patchett questions about her latest novel, State of Wonder, when the host mentioned to the author that Bel Canto was one of her favorite novels. The host’s genuine enthusiasm about Bel Canto changed the entire interview and I sensed that Ms. Patchett appreciated her passion for that novel.  I knew I would read and review Bel Canto after that interview.

Bel Canto was loosely based on the Lima Hostage Crisis of December 1996. Where members of a revolutionary guerrilla movement took hostage of high-level diplomats, government and military officials, and business executives who were attending a party at the official residence of Japan’s ambassador to Peru, Morihisa Aoki, in celebration of Emperor Akihito’s 63rd birthday.

Ms. Patchett’s version left the country unnamed and the birthday party was for a wealthy businessman, Mr. Hosokawa. The home belonged to the vice president of this unnamed South American country and the hook of the novel revolved around Roxanne Coss, opera’s most revered soprano who performed at birthday party per request by Mr. Hosokawa. The businessman loved opera and the only reason he would have came to this unnamed country because his favorite opera singer was performing at the party.

The guerrilla fighters took hostage of the residence because they thought the president of the unnamed country would be attendance for the birthday party. And if they could have taken the president as a hostage, all of their demands for freedom and overthrowing the government would be realized. However, the president did not attend the birthday party and they decided to keep everyone else as hostages.

The strength of Bel Canto was the characters and their interaction with each other under this extreme situation. Patchett created a colorful, multicultural cast of characters (Russians, Italians, Americans, Japanese, Swedes, & Germans) that grabbed my attention and made it a fascinating read.

Roxanne Coss was definitely a “diva” in a stereotypical sense but after an incident early in their captivity, she began to reveal a warmth to her personalty that belied her ‘world renowed opera singer’ persona. Mr. Hosowoka grew as well and learned the meaning of love in an entire new way. Even of the some guerrilla fighters showed their humanity and reading the story made you hope for a different outcome to their eventual fate.

Most of all, Bel Canto was a romance novel in the best sense of that genre. It seemed that the novelist was asking the question,does love really conquer all?  I would write that Patchett gave a definitive answer to that question in this story.  But, I didn’t quite agree with it.

That will not stop me from writing from how much I enjoyed reading Bel Canto and would recommend the novel be added to your reading piles and discussed at your book clubs.

I’m pleased that Bel Canto chose me to read and review this fascinating story of crisis, opera, and ultimately of love and romance.

The front cover from my debut novel being published on June 4th. Here’s the back cover blurb:

What is Destiny?

Is destiny something to be shaped by your own hands?

Is destiny something to be shaped by other people?

Or is there a higher power that ultimately shapes our destiny?

This is the journey that Diondray Azur of Charlesville will discover when he finds out the existence of a book called The Book of Kammbi. The book reveals an ancient prophecy that needs to be fulfilled by a descendant of Oscar Ortega, one of the land of Kammbia’s greatest men. All signs point to Diondray being the one who will fulfill this prophecy. However, he does not believe in the prophecy and thus begins the journey towards his destiny.