We have the second installment of their last letter, and Rick wrote to exclaim about how he's discovered that writing about what he reads is becoming part of the reading for him too. That's the same thing I found when I began writing about my reading. It's an additional dimension, not unlike discussing a book with friends. Well, this little virtual book group ought to get underway.

A second "great book" I read in the past year was Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. I first read this book when I was in high school, and I am one of probably thousands of young men inspired to the legal profession by the character of Atticus Finch, small town lawyer who defends a black man against a charge of raping a white woman in a small southern town. This magnificent book juxtaposes and exposes two types of rote prejudice in the author's society, toward the "odd" and toward blacks.

I understand that some of the PTAs or "interest groups" in this country have gotten this book banned from high school libraries because the "n-word" is used (something in common with another classic of American fiction, Huckleberry Finn). When my children are old enough to read and understand this book, I can think of no other work that I would rather have them read; certainly no book of my youth has stayed with me or influenced me as Lee's classic. One passage from the book (and Gregory Peck movie, which is absolutely faithful to the original) still sends shivers down my spine. Scout is sitting in the "colored" balcony of the courtroom, and her father's client has just (inevitably) been found guilty by the all-white jury. As Atticus takes his "lonely walk" from the courtroom, Scout feels herself being nudged by others:

"'Miss Jean Louise?'"

"I looked around. They were all standing. All around us and in the balcony on the opposite wall, the Negroes were getting to their feet. Reverend Syke's voice was as distinct as Judge Taylor's: "Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passing."

I hope and pray that, whatever they learn, my children learn to stand and honor the Atticus Finches in their world.

A book which reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird, and which is worthy to be compared with that classic, is Larry Watson's Montana 1948. In this spare, slim volume, Watson tells the story of sheriff Wesley Hayden, who ultimately must betray family and defy the custom of his community to stand up for another oppressed people, in this case, the Native American community. (Watson's short story collection, Justice, which takes place in the same Montana community, and involves many of the same characters, is also wonderful).

My wife describes a certain type of book as a "classic Rick book", being defined as a work of non-fiction which explores in (to her) excruciating detail some discrete topic, but whose writing is wonderful. I recommend below two exemplars of this genre: In The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance, Henry Petroski spends over 400 pages explaining what engineers do, how and why they do it, and why they seem to have so much fun.

This book takes a simple (and apparently mundane) familiar object, the pencil, and explains how, given the availability and expense of materials, the capacities of technology, and the fashions of the market, this object evolved to its present form.

This book is not for everyone, but I found it so interesting粺nd the writing so good緅t kept me up late many nights.

Another review

A second, much shorter "Rick book" is Dava Sobel's Longitude. In the mercantile age, sailors could easily tell latitude -- the distance above or below the equator綧ut had no reliable tool to reckon longitude. The resultant loss of life and profit by shipwreck led Parliament to create a huge prize ($12 million, in today's dollars), to the person who could devise a precise method of determining longitude from a moving ship. The British "establishment" was certain that the key to this problem was observation of the sky. This made John Harrison's task doubly difficult. Sobel's interesting and well-written story of how Harrison, a self-taught watchmaker, devised his elegant and compact timepiece, and then convinced the skeptics that it was the right tool for the job, makes great reading.

Another review of Longitude

A "mass market" novel which I highly recommend is Carl Hiaasen's Strip Tease. The basic outline of the book--good-hearted young woman forced to undress nightly in south Florida strip joint to finance custody fight with sleaseball ex-husband becomes entangled with unscrupulous "big sugar" thugs when boozer U.S. Senator falls in love with stripper--is pure "mass market", and not especially promising.

What makes this book so good--I have already re-read it--is Hiassen's sense of detail and characters. Every passage comes to life with his (often) hilarious renditions of the seedy but sweet. (The lack of this detail and characterization was what made the "blockbuster" movie from this book so mediocre). This is a great beach book, for a reader who is perpetually disappointed by "beach books."

Allen Kurzweil's A Case of Curiosities is a marvelous romp through eighteenth-century pre-revolutionary France. The young protagonist, acquires the skills of a watchmaker and is an apprentice to a dull bookseller. He finally frees himself to return to inventing, this time to create a speaking automaton whose only words, "Vive le Roi", lead to a most bizarre execution when the political tide at last turns. Kurzweil is incapable of writing a dull sentence; I highly recommend this fascinating and very funny novel.

I (Rick) have enjoyed two recent non-fiction works which deal with my profession as lawyer. Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action looks at an extremely complicated lawsuit brought by families against corporate giants, alleging that long-term pollution had caused numerous incidents of childhood leukemia. The main character in the book is an attorney who took this nearly "impossible" case through trial, invested huge amounts of his own money, and rejected very large settlement offers in what I view as a colossal exercise of ego and bad judgment.

The book illustrates several things wrong with the "tort" system today. First, this case demonstrates the clear truth that plaintiff's are hugely outstaffed and out-spent by corporate defendants and/or their insurance companies. Secondly, the book points out the inherent conflicts of interest faced by plaintiffs' lawyers under the American, "contingent fee" system. Third, trial work requires huge self-confidence, and develops over inflated egos.

However, with all the above said, I remain firmly convinced that the private tort system--which permits individuals to sue and hold defendants, including corporate America, accountable to individuals before a jury of their peers--is absolutely vital to a just society.

The second "lawyer" book I recommend is Robin W. Winks' biography of Frederick Billings. Billings, known to most Americans as the eponym for a city in Montana, started his career as a lawyer in California, where he became an expert in litigating disputed land titles. From one type of real property lawyer, he became another when he joined the Northern Pacific Railway, and was responsible for much of the transcontinental route through Montana.

Winks does not argue that Billings was a "central" figure in American western history; his life, however, is interesting, and Winks tells an engaging and illuminating story. Also, it is a pleasure to read about a "captain of industry" who, at least to his biographer, was a decent and honest man. We seem to have very few of those these days.

Carol Hunter continues:

This past summer Rick and I were out in Denver visiting his family so I was interested when my AAUW book group decided to read Doc Susie: The True Story of a Country Physician in the Colorado Rockies by Virginia Cornell.

Dr. Susan Anderson arrived in Fraser, Colorado in 1907 and remained the town physician until her death in 1960. Fraser is one of the coldest spots in the U.S. and only about 50 crow-flying miles from Denver. But in 1907, getting there involved taking a railroad journey across the Continental Divide, especially treacherous in the winter. Cornell does a good job laying down the facts of Doc Susie's life and what it must have been like to practice medicine amongst the railroad men and loggers of the Rockies. However, I question the author's extensive use of re-created conversations. One of the questions I find myself asking is "Is this a biography or a historical novel?" [Or was it a set of rough drafts for "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" scripts? -KW]

More on "Doc Susie"

Last spring I read J.G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun. It was a "2 o'clocker". It had me up until 2 or 3 a.m. every night until I got it read.

Many of you probably saw Stephen Spielberg's screen-adaptation of it which was really very good and quite faithful to the book. But the book is so much better.

In many respects it is a classic coming-of-age book. Jim is separated from his parents when the Japanese take over Shanghai during WWII, and he struggles for survival. Eventually he finds himself in an internment camp with other British and foreign-nationals where his struggles continue. I was intrigued with the dilemmas that confront Jim. When is a person near enough death that you can justify taking his food ration or his shoes? Whom do you turn to for safety when chaos is all around? Watching a young boy's innocence being shattered forever makes for compelling reading. I highly recommend this book.

Rick's turn again:

Two years ago, I read Wilton Barnhardt's novel Gospel, which was also a "2-o'clocker." I have not written about it before now because I have loaned it to so many people, saying "you must read this." My (now dog-eared) copy has made it back to me.

This is really two stories in one. In the main story, the "Gospel of the 13th Apostle" (yes, there was one. Read Acts, chapter 1) has been discovered but lost, and everyone--scholar, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, Greek, etc.--wants to find it, though for different reasons.

An erstwhile graduate student and crusty, sick and possibly dying professor are the main characters. They chase the manuscript around the world, through intrigue, double-dealing, and suspense.

The second story is the "Gospel" itself, which is quoted at the start of each chapter, and tells how the last Apostle lost, and then found, his faith.

This novel works on so many levels it is frightening. As a suspense novel, it kept me up half the night. As a chronicle of ecclesiastical history and conflict, I found it enlightening. As an attempt to re-create a chronicle of Christ and one man's response to it, I found it thought-provoking. Barnhardt wears his erudition so lightly, has so much fun, and writes so well, I recommend this book without reservation. Now that I finally have my copy back, I can't wait to re-read it.

Carol's turn:

There are "Rick books". And, I suppose, there are "Carol books". I'm read cookbooks like novels so I found many pleasures in Barbara Kafka's The Opinionated Palate: Passions and Peeves on Eating and Food. Kafka is a food writer for Gourmet and Vogue, and this book is really a collection of her essays.

She muses about everything from Hellman's mayonnaise and canned tuna to port and stilton cheese. To her mind, and mine, two classic combinations. Kafka knows her food, but is no snob, just someone who recognizes that good food and drink can make any occasion special and are worth some effort.

This was yummy reading!

An interview with Barbara Kafka

I had read good things about Alice McDermott's At Weddings and Wakes. However, this is the kind of book where the characters are mostly referred to as "the children" or "she" or "he." And crucial bits seem to happen off-stage. My impression is that the author imposes an excessive amount of space between her characters and the reader. I was continually frustrated and kept on waiting for the advertised wedding and wakes. In fairness to the writer, I must say that the wedding does actually get a few pages written about it. But as for the wakes? Although there are a few deaths, I don't recall anything being written about the decedents' wakes. Maybe I'm just being too literal about the title. But leaving that alone, I did not find this novel "tender and captivating" as one reviewer called it. I just found it supremely unsatisfying--not bad--it just didn't hit the spot.

A New York Times Review

Change of voices again:

Two recent, favorably reviewed, novels by women writers place their characters in "worst imaginable" situations. I give one pick and one pan:

The title of Elizabeth Berg's Range of Motion refers to physical therapy exercises given to comatose patients, in this instance, the narrator's husband.

Hit in the head by a falling chunk of ice from a skyscraper, Jay may never regain consciousness, and the narrator (Lainey) tries to hold together the life of her and her family while still keeping faith in her husband's possible recovery.

The male NPR radio reviewer (I forget whom) loved this book, and I bought it (a rare full-price purchase) based on that recommendation. I was disappointed. While not a "bad" book, I never came to care particularly for the characters, and much of the plot seemed contrived. I would be interested what others think.

Neeter Skeeter's review of Range of Motion

[There廣 a paragraph missing here. It's about Jane Hamilton廣 book Map of the World. You can "go" to it here.]

To escape the pathos and sadness of Map of the World, I recommend a good satire. Christopher Buckley's Thank you for Smoking fits the bill nicely. Nick Naylor, hero of this wickedly funny yarn, is the leading Washington lobbyist for the tobacco companies, and he is having a bad year, what with Surgeon General's reports and lawsuits.

The year gets worse when he is kidnapped by an anonymous anti-smoking zealot, who attempts (unsuccessfully) to murder Nick by covering him from head to toe with nicotine patches. The tone and black humor of this book are conveyed nicely by the name Nick gives to his power-lunch group of lobbyists for the tobacco, alcohol and firearms interests: the MOD ("Merchants of Death") squad. Read and enjoy!

Allreaders.com on Buckley's book

[Maybe I'll try again. As Chip Hauss was packing to leave for the UK for a couple years, he handed me a copy of Buckley's book with a recommendation as enthusiastic as Rick's. I started reading a couple times, but never got very far. I can廠 even get all the way through one of Buckley's end-pieces in the New Yorker. I don廠 know what it is. I just don't get it most of the time. Maybe I'm too literal. Maybe I'm too midwestern. Maybe I'm humor-impaired. I never did like Jerry Lewis or the Three Stooges. The Marx Brothers, on the other hand almost always crack me up. Laurel and Hardy often leave me yawning, but Abbot and Costello's standup routines leave me rolling in the aisle. While you're reading all this, you can do a psychoanalysis of my sense of humor and tell me how you pigeon-holed me. -KW]

As I (Rick) have admitted in a prior issue of Reading, most of my books come from the remainder table, and many of the books above were purchased on the strength of the cover blurbs. One particularly satisfying book from this category is Allison Lurie's 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Foreign Affairs (I had never heard of it).

Taking place in London, this mostly humorous story recounts the affairs of a somewhat stuffy middle-aged female professor of children廣' literature with a good-hearted Texan engineer (whom the professor naturally feels superior to), and a young hot-shot English professor on sabbatical in London with a famous soap-opera actress. Both affairs fail because the lovers are so busy deciding who their partners should be that they fail to pay attention to who they really are.

Ethan Canin's novel Blue River tells the story of two brothers: Lawrence, the proverbial "bad boy" or hooligan, and Edward, the good son who grows up to be a doctor.

The novel begins and ends in the present, with Lawrence unexpectedly showing up at the home of Edward and his family, in trouble, and in need of help. Edward, who sends his brother packing, must decide whether to reconsider and help Lawrence, who really has no place to turn. The middle and bulk of the book tells of the two boys' lives, growing up together until Lawrence must escape, one step ahead of the law. I found the characters utterly believable, and still wonder whether Edward, in the end, made the right choice.

Finally, as is evident from the above, I (Rick) had fallen behind in writing my "rants, raves, etc.", ending up with a huge stack of books to write up. I have omitted a few entirely, as simply awful or unremarkable. Two works of fiction which I utterly enjoyed when I read them earlier this year, but whose plots I cannot now recount, are Gustaw Herling's The Island: Three Tales and Patrick McGrath's Dr. Haggard's Disease. I do not know what it says for a book (or its reader) to have made so little lasting impression, but nonetheless to be recommended. I will say that I recall the writing itself of both books to be marvelous, and that it was the writing--how the novelists expressed themselves--rather than the stories which impressed me at the time, and which sticks with me now.

Thank you, Rick and Carol. Your efforts have made this issue a truly cooperative effort. I have to keep reminding myself that there are two people writing from Potsdam, New York so I don廠 feel like a reading slacker. The rest of you can be assured that the Hunters' efforts are extraordinary and that you can earn your asterisk without such erudition.