Hilary Mantel, WOLF HALL

This is a bold and ambitious novel that took me 3 tries to read--but I'm glad I tried that third time. I've seen other reviews that mention how difficult it is to read. Part of the difficulty, I think, is that the book is written in the third person ("he") but focalized almost exclusively through Cromwell (as in, the camera is on his shoulder and the narrative voice is like Cromwell's speaking voice--wry and shrewdly observant, laced with zeugma and understatement). At times this creates some peculiar grammar. For example, Mantel uses the pronoun "he" to refer to both Cromwell and King Henry, or both Cromwell and Thomas More in the same sentence. But once I became used to having to reread paragraphs to figure out which "he" was saying or doing what, I was drawn wholly into the story. Mantel's world building is as complete and elaborate as (dare I say) Rowling's for Harry Potter--and Mantel's breadth of knowledge is awe-inspiring. Yet because Cromwell's subjectivity is so complete, and the events are always filtered through his sensibilities, I never felt I was being served a history lesson. If you've watched THE TUDORS, you'll find all the echoes of vengeance and desire and willfulness and conniving. I'll read the next.

Jared Diamond, GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL: THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES

Holy crow, what a book! And I had never heard of it until my son brought it home from school. How did I miss this Pulitzer winner? I think it was because the book won the same year I was immersed in studying for my PhD exams. There's my excuse. But I would say it doesn't matter that it was written 20 years ago. It holds up.

This book has a very ambitious scope and yet is still accessible, with anecdotes and examples and even bits of humor to keep the theory and the long history (he begins 13,000 years ago, when the last Ice Age ended) from turning dry. Diamond begins with a question posed to him by his friend Yali: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea but we black people had little cargo of our own?" More broadly, the question is why did some countries conquer others, develop more technology, expand their empires, acquire wealth, and so on, when others did not?

This book explores a range of what he calls "proximate causes," but the most significant "ultimate causes" are the geography and the ecology of different areas. One reason is that some environments allowed for a shift from hunter/gatherer to food production. Among other things, this enables people to stay put, which facilitates interactions such as collaboration and the formation of tribes as well as immunity to certain diseases (most of which come from animals, apparently); and food production, which allows for stock-piling, permits some people the option of not acquiring food, so they can devote their time to other pursuits--for example, trades, art, language, politics, religion--and the technology such as the guns and steel in the book's title. A key insight: because Europe is on a east/west axis (it's longest axis runs from Portugal to China, say) the climate is common across a long stretch, which facilitated the transfer of plants and languages and early technology. By contrast, North America and South America have an axis that runs north/south. The corn grown in, say, Nebraska might do well if transplanted down to a similar climate in South America, but how is corn to cross the arid desert and skinny little Panama in between?

Another distinction I liked was the one Diamond makes between two different types of information transfer, for disseminating ideas, skills, or technologies. One means is called blueprinting. I hand you a camera, and you use it as a model to make your own camera. The other is idea diffusion, in which you have seen me use the camera, so you know it's "out there" and ready to be created, and you go home and make one for yourself.

All in all, a dense but great read. Some of the chapters toward the end got a bit repetitive for me--but that's perhaps natural with a book that is covering all the continents and different cultures, all of which in various ways are following the lines of his general argument.

One of the most interesting suggestions is in the Afterword, when he explains that his discoveries about the different forms of organization of human groups have implications for business and our world today. (Bill Gates has applied some of these principles to his workplace, for example.)

An intriguing read, I would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to understand the evolution of modern humankind.

Keith O'Brien, FLY GIRLS: HOW FIVE DARING WOMEN DEFIED ALL ODDS AND MADE AVIATION HISTORY

This true history reads almost like a novel, and O'Brien has a fine eye for the details that bring these individual women alive on the page. Maybe that's why this book broke my heart a bit. (A spoiler here: we all know that Amelia Earhart dies. All but one of the other four women die in ways that are either similarly violent or quieter tragedies.) The four other women he follows are Florence Klingensmith, Ruth Elder, Ruth Nichols, and Louise Thaden. Although they hail from different parts of the US and disparate economic situations, each woman faces the challenge of trying to be taken seriously as a pilot in an age when men were making statements like "If women spent more time making homes pleasant and less time trying to get men's jobs there would be less domestic trouble ... The world would be happier" and "Our experience has disclosed the fact that most women have insufficient mechanical ability and little desire to observe and learn." Arg.

Unsentimentally engaging and well researched, this book is for readers of Hidden Figures and anyone who wants to learn more about the 1930s and recovered women's histories. One of my favorite lines is the one O'Brien puts on the frontispiece, from Louise Thaden: "If you will tell me why, or how, people fall in love, I will tell you why, or how, I happened to take up aviation."

Madeline Miller, THE SONG OF ACHILLES

I liked this book for many of the same reasons I loved Miller's more recent CIRCE. It's sort of a warp-to-weft novel, with the story of the Iliad's hero being told not by Achilles but by his sidekick and (in this book) lover Patroclos. The language is lovely and poetic; the pace quick. I thought the homosocial/homosexual bend is handled beautifully. Miller convincingly elaborates and elevates the psychology of these two men during the events of the ten-year war, so we understand why the theft of Briseis, for example, matters so deeply to Achilles, and as a result, Briseis becomes a rounder, more complex characters as well.

A few favorite lines that I read aloud just for the pleasure of hearing them in my ear. (And I know this doesn't do them justice; part of why they strike me is how they appear in relation to their context. But still, I want to share!)

I was listening to the drumbeat of my own impatient heart. "Hurry, I remember saying."

The gray sand, the gray sky, and my mouth, parched and bare.

I sank into the trailing thoughts of dreams.

Cleopatra, Patroclus. Her name built from the same pieces as mine, only reversed.

No spoilers but my heart broke a bit at the end. Would definitely recommend!

Fiona Davis, THE MASTERPIECE

I had high hopes for this book, as I love historical novels, especially those featuring strong women protagonists, and this split narrative, set in 1929 and 1974, had two! I truly appreciated the author's research, for the book contained interesting historical details about Grand Central and the art school that was located there. But I found the intertwining of the two plots forced and rushed at the end, for it felt to me that Virginia's work to uncover the truth about Clara--which might have been an opportunity to reveal how Virginia's character had evolved--occurred almost entirely offstage and is explained to the reader through the rather clumsy device of Virginia's monologue to a rapt audience. I felt as though the extramarital sex/romance plots were used to stand in for the psychological daring that I was never convinced the characters possessed. I was also repeatedly pulled out of the narrative by phrases that felt anachronistic for the 1920s and 1970s, at least to me--phrases like "freaking out" and "Virginia didn't care that she was coming off as a train geek," "looking forward to catching up" and "we're not a good fit." I see that many, many people loved this book ("Riveting, sophisticated and utterly sublime" from Tasha Alexander); I guess it just wasn't for me.

Anthony Horowitz, MAGPIE MURDERS, A NOVEL

Just finished and enjoyed this mystery by Anthony Horowitz, who created the TV series FOYLE'S WAR, which is one of my all-time favorites. This novel is literary, meta- and clever. The main character is an editor named Susan Ryeland, who has received her client Alan Conway's last mystery. He is dying of cancer, and he has written a novel that features an inspector named Atticus Pund, who is (also) dying of cancer. The entire mystery, entitled MAGPIE MURDERS, the last in a series of nine, is included inside this book, so there is a sort of Russian doll structure to it. The themes are broad: the publishing industry, the creative process, the line between autobiography and fiction, human curiosity, what authors owe readers, and what we owe the people we love. It's also wry and playful. I found myself scribble "Ha!" in the margins many times. Here's a typical passage that made me giggle:

"Haven't the public had enough of murder?" I asked.

"You're joking," [Redmond, a TV producer replied]. "Inspector Morse, Taggart, Lewis, Foyle's War, Endeavour, ... Broadchurch ... --British TV would disappear into a dot on the screen without murder. They're even bumping people off in the soap operas."

Would recommend.

Andrew Gross, BUTTON MAN

This is both an historical mystery and a pull-himself-up-by-his-bootstraps coming-of-age novel, set in early 1900s New York City. It is based on the author's grandfather's true story, about growing up poor on the Lower East Side and making his way in the garment industry. New York City feels terrifying and lawless, with no higher authority to whom anyone can appeal; it's only gangs and mobsters, until Dewey comes along. I found the story compelling, the pacing quick, the setting immersive, the plot turns unexpected. The story has heart. Enjoyed it very much!