The Little Paris Bookshop, by Nina George

The narrative of The Little Paris Bookshop follows Jean Perdu, a Frenchman that was jilted by his lover over twenty years earlier finally opening the Dear John letter she'd left him, only to discover it wasn't what he expected. A bit of a madcap adventure ensues with Perdu picking up a couple of eccentric companions along the way, each with a quest of their own. The plot and characterization are both pretty thin, but the book shines in two areas: capturing the flavor of the countryside and illustrating the emotional might of storytelling.

As much as I enjoy living in Austin, getting away from civilization from time to time has always been a guilty pleasure. George depicts the transition from city to pastoral beautifully. "Something very specific was missing, something Perdu had grown so accustomed to that its absence gave him a slight dizziness and caused a humming in his ears. Immense relieve swept through him when he realized what it was. There was no rush of cars, no roar of the metro, no buzz of air conditioners. None of the whirr and grumble of millions of machines and transmissions and elevators and escalators. There were no sounds of reversing trucks, trains braking or heels on gravel and stone. None of the bass-driven music from the yobs two houses down, the crackle of skateboards, the chatter of scooters." The country is far from silent, but the noises of nature are much more soothing and pleasant than those of dense development.

My favorite things in life are my family and friends, Longhorn sports, beer, and books—not necessarily in that order. Reading has been a treasured companion of mine for as long as I can remember, and George is clearly a kindred spirit. She describes reading as having an "accompanying sense of wonder and the feeling of having a film running inside your head" which I think is as good of a depiction as any of what happens when consuming a novel. The back cover of my edition calls The Little Paris Bookshop "a love letter to books, meant for anyone who believes in the power of stories to shape people's lives." I wholeheartedly agree with this; the main lesson of the story isn't that good things come to good people or to those who wait, but to those that believe in the power of words to heal and shape ones soul.

While a bit treacly and overemotional at times, I quite enjoyed reading this book. It doesn't have the depth of Cyrano de Bergerac or the humor of The Princess Bride, but it is a pleasant read that makes for a solid diversion on a lazy weekend.

First Sentence:

How on earth could I have let them talk me into it?

The Escape Artist, by Brad Meltzer

This book captured my attention from the prologue. Nola Brown is killed in a plane crash, and the mortician that is processing her body discovers something is very wrong by finding a note she swallowed before dying that reads, "Nola, you were right. Keep running." That hook unfolds into a mystery that jumps back in forth in time, delving into the Nola's abusive past and her being hunted in the present by an off-the-books military unit. I thought the identity of the "big bad" was pretty obvious, but Meltzer did a good job with red herrings so there were other plausible candidates. The two main characters are fairly well fleshed out, but the others are a bit one-dimensional. The story moves so quickly though it isn't really a problem—much like a Liam Neeson action movie, it isn't deep but it is enjoyable!

First Sentence:

Jim "Zig" Zigarowski knew the pain was coming.

Never Mind, by Edward St. Aubyn

I was pretty excited when I picked up this book, the first of five in the Patrick Melrose novels. There was even a blurb on the back from an author I really like—Michael Chabon—reading, "One of the most amazing reading experiences I've had in a decade." Boy, was I disappointed.

The story recounts a weekend gathering of three thoroughly unlikeable couples in the British upper class. Patrick Melrose is the young son of one of these sets of parents, abused by his domineering father and ignored by his submissive addict mother. As a contrast to the coarse characters, however, the writing is both poetic and sophisticated. "After a while he no longer recognized what he was thinking and, just as a shop window sometimes prevents the onlooker from seeing the objects behind the glass and folds him instead in a narcissistic embrace, his mind ignored the flow of impressions from the outside world and locked him into a daydream he could not have subsequently described." Flipping through the book finds passages like this on virtually every page. Despite the beautiful prose, though, I couldn't get past the cruelty of the people being described. I struggled to finish this book, and I don't think I'll be picking up the next one in the series anytime soon.

First Sentence:

At half-past seven in the morning, carrying the laundry she had ironed the night before, Yvette came down the drive on her way to the house.

The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, by Theodora Goss

In this novel, Goss has created an excellent homage to Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with a thoroughly entertaining twist. Where Moore took classic characters that starred in their own novels such as Captain Nemo and Allan Quatermain and formed an alliance, Goss takes the daughters of fictional characters (some appearing in their progenitor's novels and some created by Goss) for her team: Mary Jeckyll and Diana Hyde are the children of the two halves of Dr. Jekyll, Beatrice Rappaccini is the eponymous Rappaccinis Daughter, Catherine Moreau is one of Dr. Moreau's creations, and Justine Frankenstein the second monster of Victor Frankenstein. Toss in Holmes and Watson as occasional partners for the women and Renfield as one of a group of notable antagonists and we have a band of heroes (calling themselves the Athena Club) and villains (the Société des Alchimistes) set for an epic showdown.

Well written, The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter has a unique narrative style. The story purports to be a novel written in the early 1900's by Catherine Moreau, but has the main characters injecting commentary along the way. The first person narrative erratically shifts between the various characters which I found odd at first, but came to appreciate. This distinctive technique is self-referentially explained away in the course of the plot: "JUSTINE: Is the story supposed to be jumping around like that, from Mary's head, to Diana's, to Beatrice's? CATHERINE: I told you, this is a new way of writing. How can I write a story about all of us if I don't show what we were all thinking?" Clever and quirky, this approach to storytelling adds greatly to the overall literary experience. With a compelling plot and fantastic characters, I eagerly look forward to reading the next adventure of the Athena Club, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman.

First Sentence:

Mary Jeckyll stared down at her mother's coffin.

The Sherlockian, by Graham Moore

Moore has spun a captivating debut novel that takes place in parallel at both the end of the 19^th century and the early 21^rst. He takes details from history (Bram Stoker and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were friends; Conan Doyle hated Sherlock Holmes, his greatest creation; and Conan Doyle was a diligent diarist but one of his volumes was discovered missing after his death) and the present (the Baker Street Irregulars is an active private society of dedicated Holmes aficionados) and blends them into a couple of mysteries with a single narrative. The Victorian thread follows Conan Doyle and Stoker on the trail of a serial killer, and the modern thread is an investigation into the murder of a prominent Sherlockian who had recently claimed to find Doyle's missing diary, which just so happens covers the time of the earlier adventure.

Chock full of trivia about Conan Doyle and Holmes this is a book clearly aimed at fans of the oeuvre but I don't think one needs to have read every Sherlock adventure to enjoy this; simply understanding and appreciating the caricature of Holmes is enough. There are actually several mysteries explored here: who was killing young suffragettes in 1900, who killed the scholar in 2010, what was written in the missing diary, and what happened to it? All these questions are answered more or less satisfactorily, although the conclusion in the Swiss Alps was a bit farfetched—is breaking and entering a public museum really that easy in this day and age? Overall I found some of the characterization (especially of the modern sections) was sacrificed for the plot throughout, but the plot held together well and rocketed from scene to scene so this wasn't the negative it could have been. An enjoyable read for both Holmes devotees and casual mystery fans.

First Sentence:

Arthur Conan Doyle curled his brow tightly and thought only of murder.

Song of Spider-Man, by Glen Berger

Even though Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark is often called one of the biggest disasters ever produced on Broadway, it is a show I dearly would have liked to have seen. Spider-Man is one of my favorite heroes, and the descriptions of the action scenes in the show sound amazing. Spider-Man and the Green Goblin battling in the air above the audience, leaping off walls, briefly landing in the aisles before soaring off again. As great as that sounds, Song of Spider-Man makes it clear what a mess the musical actually was.

The reason the show was such a train wreck was the creative minds behind the show didn't understand what makes Spider-Man special. Interestingly, the author of the book is one of those creative minds. Berger details how he and Julie Taymor came up with the story, and then proceeds to cover how it clearly didn't work while they steadfastly held to their original vision. Spider-Man was created in 1962, and in the decades since has been populated with scores of memorable characters. For whatever reason, Berger and Taymor decided to have the main antagonist in the musical be a character from Greek mythology instead. Eventually the producers of Turn Off the Dark brought in a different creative team that salvaged what they could, but the show never could shake the bad press.

Sadly, for as honest as Berger is while discussing the trials and tribulations of the musical, I don't think he ever came to terms with why it all went wrong. He writes of how the plot was eviscerated on the internet and he was so upset he'd go online and respond to the haters (spoiler, it didn't help). He simply couldn't understand why people were disemboweling a show that they had never seen, much less not even being complete yet! I agree the internet can be an awful place and comic fans in particular are famously impossible to please, but it simply isn't that difficult to see why. Imagine if in The Lion King Simba defeats Scar at the end of act one, and then in act two he has to fight a poacher that is Artemis in disguise. It would be awful, right? Well, that is basically the plot of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Amusingly, Taymor is the force behind The Lion King as well, but didn't stray from the source material there.

Song of Spider-Man is a great look behind the curtains at what it takes to create a Broadway production. (It is especially interesting as the musical wasn't a successful one.) Berger doesn't pull any punches either. As a main character in the tale he comes off as indecisive and feckless in some places, fawning and obsequious in others; but, he shares it all, giving an overall impression of honesty. Anyone interested in musical theater should enjoy this.

First Sentence:

The four drinks I knocked back on an empty stomach in the empty VIP room were finally kicking in.

Armada, by Ernest Cline

Despite having basically the same plot as the excellent Ready Player One (video game playing awkward teen stumbles into a massive intrigue, meets and falls for a beautiful ingénue, and then becomes the hero of the world) I couldn't put this book down, and in fact read it in one sitting! Cline fills it with not only references to classic video games and science fiction movies, but manages to make them seem fresh rather than derivative. The basic plot closely resembles The Last Starfighter, but instead of being ignored Cline embraces this (and all alien invasion tropes) by saying that these exist to prepare the populace for the reality of extraterrestrials. I love that he also tosses in other pop culture references to movies like Firefox and Red Dawn but doesn't explain them—either you get them or you don't. I'm sure I didn't get them all, but I liked the instant memories the ones I did brought to mind. I haven't met anyone that didn't like this book, from my fellow 1980's kids to my own kids!

First Sentence:

I was staring out the classroom window and daydreaming of adventure when I spotted the flying saucer.