The "BR Pile"

This is me trying something new.  You will, I hope, have noticed I’ve started listing what I’ve got on my TBR (to be read) pile on the home page of this site.   My plan is to do a brief review of the book the next time I blog, thus moving them to the “been read pile.”  Last year at Edgars Week, I really liked what Stephen King said about writing four hours a day and reading four hours a day.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to manage that, but I like the idea of trying.  And I’d like to blog more often than I do.  The reviews won’t be long, a couple of sentences, but I’ll tell you whether I enjoyed it, thought another book did it better, etc.  I’d like to hear what you think, too. 

So by taking the things I’ve been reading, then writing about them, I’ll get through the ginormous pile of books I have TBR, and maybe turn you on to a subject or writer that you haven’t met before.  Here goes.

Valerie Plame Wilson, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House 

I probably don’t have to tell you that this was Valerie Plame Wilson’s account of how her name was leaked to the public while she was a covert officer for the CIA.  You’ll remember the news:  think Scooter Libby, yellowcake uranium from Nigeria, the sixteen words, the Iraqi war.  It was interesting to compare this book (and its redactions) to other books, including Lindsay Moran’s book Blowing my Cover:  My Life as a CIA Spy, and The Politics of Truth, by Wilson’s husband Joseph Wilson.  I was reading it primarily as part of my research on how spying works, but I found it much more useful as an examination of current events.  She’s very careful to document her arguments—she’s had to be—and I was convinced.  This is a case of a person who’d worked hard to serve her country, and then was exposed as a political retaliation.  

Susanna Jones, The Missing Person’s Guide to Love

I met Susanna years ago, and I’m hooked on her work.  Her other award-winning novels (The Earthquake Bird and Water Lily) are entrancing, beautifully written, and, well, creepy.  You’re increasingly unnerved while you read them and slowly learn that things aren’t quite as the narrator understands—or wants—them to be, yet you can’t set them aside.  In this one, a young woman leaves Turkey for the funeral of a friend she hasn’t seen in years, one with whom she was convicted in an arson case as teenagers.  The story’s reality unravels as she tries to find out what happened to a girl who vanished just before. 

Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner, eds., Many Bloody Returns

An anthology of vampire stories with birthdays as the theme.  What I particularly liked about this was that I got to see mystery-writing friends tackle vampires as characters (if they hadn’t already) and I got to check out some great writers from the supernatural and urban fantasy world.  I admit, I’m a sucker (oh, dear, really didn’t mean that) for collections and anthologies, because of the sample factor and you learn new authors to check out.  The cool thing about this experiment is that each author offered a completely different interpretation of “birthday” means to vampires.  Love that.  This New York Times bestseller will be followed by Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, to which I’ll be contributing a story.

Gary Paulsen,  Hatchet

This is one of the books recommended to me by my friends in Takotna, Alaska.  A boy travelling to visit his father is stranded alone when the small plane he’s in crashes.  Brian has to survive with the clothes on his back and the hatchet his mother gave him.  This is a YA story, and I found some of the situations a little grim at times (okay, I never should have seen The Lion King, and am told to avoid Bambi)  but what I loved was that Brian drew from common sense, logic, and his suburban upbringing—TV, rides in the park, school classes—to survive.  Stay calm.  Don’t feel sorry for yourself.  Keep busy.  Make a plan.  Be mindful, because a tiny mistake in the wilderness can kill you.  There are worse lessons to take away from a book.