The Swan Thieves - Elizabeth Kostova

A few years ago I read Kostova's debut novel, The Historian, told through a series of letters about the Dracula legend. The book started out with promise - suspenseful, mysterious, great characters, exciting action...but it was simply too long and half-way through, I just wanted it to end. I had the exact same reaction to The Swan Thieves. Kostova's follow-up begins with an artist, seemingly gone mad, who pulls a knife on a famous painting at the National Art Gallery. He is sent to a mental institution where psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe attempts to piece together the nature of the artist's disturbance and the meaning behind the attack. Doing so sends Marlowe around the world, speaking to the artist's ex-wife and former lover, and digging up old letters that unlock the answer to the artist's obsession and descent into madness. Nearly every character in the novel is an artist or an aspiring artist, and there is a great deal of focus on paiting, the important of art in one's life, and the attention art requires. The problem is that none of the characters has a very unique view on the subject, and after a couple hundred pages their observations seem trite and repetitive. This book is about 560 pages, and probably could have been whittled down to 300 or so. Nothing much happens, and Marlowe as a the main investigator crosses far too many ethical boundaries for me to trust any of his observations or conclusions. Again, Kostova has come up with a fascinating premise for her novel, and some potentially interesting characters, but the execution left me unsatisfied.

A Darkeness More than Night - Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch Series #7)

In the latest Harry Bosch installment, Connelly, brings in characters from a couple of his other stand-alone novels. Terry McCaleb, an ex-cop from Blood Sport, has retired to Catalina to raise his family following a heart transplant. Jack McEvoy, from The Poet and The Scarecrow, also makes an appearance as a meddling journalist. This book initially tracks two separate stories. In the first, McCaleb is brought out of retirement to consult on the macabre murder of a suspect Bosch showed particular interest prior to his death. In the second story, Bosch is testifying as the primary law enforcement officer at the trial of a famous Hollywood director charged with murdering one of his actresses. The two stories come together when McCaleb begins to suspect Bosch in his investigation, and Bosch is left to crack the case and prove his own innocence. Perhaps this is true in most police stories (and sadly, real life), but Connelly's books seem full of officers who jump to conclusions and then wear blinders that prevent them from objectively viewing any evidence that points them in a different direction. I find it wholly infuriating, and it always seems to lead to an extraneous death or some other unfortunate outcome that could have been avoided if the officer had just done their actual job instead of being lazy. But still, I read on...

Espresso Tales - Alexander McCall Smith (44 Scotland Street Series #2)

Given that work has been quite busy lately, I feel like I've gravitated toward a lot of mysteries - which are usually pretty quick mindless reads (at least the ones I read), with characters I know, and entertaining subject matter. But, I decided to pick up the second in Smith's 44 Scotland Street series because I felt like reading about characters I knew, but in a more gossipy, less murderous setting. This was definitely what the doctor ordered. Espresso Tales is more of the same of the petty quirky inhabitants of 44 Scotland Street and their surrounding Edinburgh neighborhood. In particular, I liked that this book focused more on Bertie - the precocious five year old whose mother sends him to yoga, Italian, and saxaphone lessons, but who just wants to wear jeans and play with trains and go fishing like the other boys in school. His quest for independence found some traction in this one, which I really enjoyed. All the other characters are back, and meander about in their own daily encounters. Nothing too exciting or crazy, but all in all getting closer to Maupin's Tales of the City. I'm very much looking forward to continuing with this series (there appear to be three that I have not yet read, and I'm sure he'll write another by the time I get to those).

Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell (Kurt Wallander Series #1)

Since the success of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, a number of sites I buy books from have been pushing various other Scandinavian mystery writers. I picked this one which sounded good - and is part of a series that I can hopefully get into. Kurt Wallander is a Swedish police inspector. Like many literary detectives, he has relationship issues and doesn't play well with others or take very good care of himself. When an elderly couple is found bludgeoned to death in their remote farmhouse, Wallander is on the case. The dying woman's last word is "foreign," giving Wallander little to go on, but a lot for the racially charged anti-immigrant villagers to get riled up about. As Wallander races against the clock to find the murderer, he also falls in love with the prosecutor, and tries to mend his relationship with his estranged daughter. Not as intricate as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but still a good bleak mystery.

Nurtureshock - Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman

This is like Freakonomics meets Dr. Spock - or challenging widely-held beliefs about child-rearing with interesting studies and fascinating anecdotes. This is a very quick read that will (hopefully) change the way people think about what children need and how best to engage children to become thinking hard-working members of society. I particularly enjoyed the chapter that focused on whether parents praise ther children too much. I did feel this "title" was a misnomer, because the chapter is about the benefits of encouraging the hard work of children, rather than the fact that they are "so smart." Recent studies show that focusing on the hard work it takes to accomplish tasks leads to children taking more risks, spending more time on a given problem, and in the end performing better, than children who hear reinforcement that they are only good at certain things because of some sort of innate intelligence. While this concept makes a great deal of sense to me, I still think that telling a child that they are hard-working, or that their preserverance led to their success is a form of "praise." So, I wouldn't say that we should praise our children less, just that we should praise our children in different ways. There were a few chapters I would have loved to read more about (I probably could if I'd just flipped to the bibliography!), such as one chapter about whether children are inherently color-blind when it comes to race. Bronson & Merryman answer "no" to this question, and encourage parents to have frank disucssion with young children about race - and that having such discussions leads to more accepting and tolerant individuals. There is no explanation, however, of what such a discussion would look like. There was also a criticism of children's books that present conflict between individuals - even if such conflict is resolved with a lesson at the end of the book - with the research demonstrating that children take in the examples of conflict, but don't always absorb the lesson. The Bearnstein Bears books, sadly, were pointed out as not a great model for sibling conflict. A suggested reading list of books that do teach children good values and lessons, without such negative effects would have been a nice addition. But, of course, this book isn't intended to be an all encompassing guide to parenting, it's intended to be food for thought, to help reshape our assumptions, and encourage all of us to be more thoughtful in our interactions with children.

An Unquiet Mind - Kay Redfield Jamison

The ability to write honestly and insightfully about one's own life takes a great deal of courage. To do this about yourself when you suffer from a stigmatized mental illness is pretty miraculous. Dr. Jamison is a leading expert on manic-depressive disorder (commonly referred to now as bi-polar disorder). She has also battled the illness nearly her entire life. An Unquiet Mind is Jamison's journey through her life - her struggles with doctors and various medications, and her amazing accomplishments through medical school and the field of psychiatry. I often feel, as a woman, that I would not go to a doctor who was not a woman because I want someone who (on some level) understands the symtoms I'm complaining about. When it comes to mental illness, it makes sense that a patient would also want a doctor who could understand the euphoria and the depression (or whatever applicable symptoms) - who wouldn't (one hopes) have judgments about what can be done or what should be fixed. Yet, clearly in our society, people have reservations about seeking help from people who seem to need help themselves. The compassion Jamison brings to the area is tremendous, and her ability to share her story in such a real way, I hope, will change people's minds about this ilness and those struggling daily to survive it.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot

I'm not a big science person, so when I first heard what this book was about, I had no interest in reading it. Then I kept seeing it everywhere and it kept getting recommended to me on all my book sites, so I figured I'd better pick it up if only for cultural literacy reasons. Henrietta Lacks was a poor African-American woman with cervical cancer in the 1950s. Without health insurance, she traveled to Johns Hopkins Medical Center for treatment, where they weren't able to do much to alleve her suffering, but did take samples of her cells for research purposes. Unlike any cells cultured before hers, Henrietta's cells actually grew and reproduced at an amazing rate - rendering themselves "immortal" and becoming the basis for hundreds of thousands of experiments around the globe. Henrietta's cells, referred to as HeLa, have been used to develop the vaccine for polio,medications for cancer and other viruses, advances in in vitro fertilization and cloning, and countless other medical miracles. But for decades, Henrietta's identity remained a mystery, and little to nothing was known about her as a person. Her family also knew nothing about the fact that her cells were being used for all this important work. Rebecca Skloot set about to discover the woman behind this amazing scientific feat - and what she has compiled is an incredible social history of the life of Henrietta Lacks, as well as an explanation of the science behind HeLa, and a balanced discussion of the bioethical issue implicated in the use of individuals' cells without their informed consent. While mired in science, this book is easily accessible. My personal interests lay in the discussion of Henrietta's children and her background - there is extreme poverty, abuse, and mental health in this family - which could have been more richly explored by someone with more of a psychological background. But, for the most part, I found this book simply fascinating - incredible that one person could unknowingly have contributed so much - and taken so long to get the recognition she truly deserves.