Catherine House: A Novel
by Elisabeth Thomas
Disappointing (3/12/2020)
Basically, Catherine House is a refuge for brilliant, but alienated youth where more time appears to be spent drinking wine, having sex and playing games than studying. Plasm studies are the pinnacle of success at Catherine, but would not pass any ethics board in the USA. Overall, the book was depressing unless you are a big fan of Sartre or Camus.
Welcome to the Pine Away Motel and Cabins
by Katarina Bivald
A Magical Story in Oregon (12/1/2019)
Very entertaining book with great characters. While the book makes one think a bit of Lovely Bones and Fried Green Tomatoes, it is much, much more. It could easily be converted into a great Netflix or Amazon Prime series with such a cast of lovable, interesting figures. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
The Seine: The River that Made Paris
by Elaine Sciolino
The History and Magic of the Seine (9/22/2019)
As somewhat of a Francophile, I enjoyed this book very much. It is very well written and filled with interesting facts and stories about the Seine and its cities. Although I was just in Paris, it makes me want to go back in the immediate future and see more of the sites that the author described. If you are planning a trip on the Seine or to one of its cities, I think that you would particularly enjoy this book.
The Secrets We Kept: A novel
by Lara Prescott
The Secrets We Kept (7/22/2019)
I had the good fortune of hearing Lara Prescott present an abbreviated synopsis of her wonderful book, The Secrets We Kept, at the University of Texas, Austin. This book of historical fiction is even better than her excellent talk.
The book is a multifaceted story centered around the dissemination of Boris Pasternak's masterpiece novel, Dr. Zhivago, initially to the west and then back into the Soviet Union. This involves the work of many parties, including an Italian working at Radio Moscow, a filthy rich Italian nouveau publisher, the CIA, Pasternak's mistress, and almost accidentally Pasternak himself.
The book goes back and forth from East to West with Pasternak and his mistress Olga (the muse for Lara in Dr. Zhivago) featured in the East and the CIA and its agents heading the activities in the West. The characters are extremely well portrayed on both sides of the Iron Curtain. There is also an interesting subplot involving two of the female CIA operatives that illustrates the difficulties faced by those who strayed from the very rigid norms of the day.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who liked Dr. Zhivago, either book or movie, and/or A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Those who are interested in the history of the Soviet Union, the cold war, and the CIA would also probably enjoy this book.
