Hot Money

I really wanted to read a Dick Francis book after watching Zenyatta in the Breeders Cup.  She is such an amazing horse.  For anyone who has never read Dick Francis, he is a former steeplechase jockey, and all of his books are mysteries that somehow involve the horse racing world.  Usually the main character is a kind of everyman, often a jockey or trainer, who somehow gets recruited to solve a murder or fix some other kind of crisis.  I got really into these books once I outgrew the Thoroughbred and Saddle Club series and now DF is in my top 5 of favorite authors, and luckily he wrote like 400 books before he passed away a few months ago (RIP...seriously, I got teary when I read his obituary, that's how much I love him) so I still have plenty to enjoy.  If you're into horses like I am, you'll love these books, but honestly they are great mystery stories even if you take out the horse stuff - really great pace, lots of unexpected creative plot twists, entertaining and realistic dialogue.  And you will learn some funny British words.

Hot Money is about a jockey, Ian, who is from a mixed family - his dad's 5th wife was recently murdered and now it looks like the murderer is after his estranged father too, so Ian reconciles with his dad and basically becomes his bodyguard and private detective.  They know that the murderer is almost certainly one of Ian's half-siblings, so there's a lot of thought provoking issues about family betrayal, childhood trauma, and greed.  The dad is a great character - comic at times but also very real and likable.  A lot of the story involves the family home and the house almost becomes like a character as well.  DF never disappoints.

If you want to see one of the most heartbreaking moments in sports, check out this video of Dick Francis riding Devon Loch in the 1956 Grand National:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SUCvrzdILE

Up Next: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by JK Rowling

The 19th Wife

I decided to buy this book after watching a 4.5 hour marathon of Sister Wives.  Polygamy is hot right now, I guess.  This book is one of those kind of cheesy historical fiction novels that weaves together jazzed-up stories about real historical figures with a made-up story about fictional modern characters.  In the modern story, the main character has been kicked out of his polygamous community because he is a teenage male and a homosexual.  He learns that his mother (wife #19) has been accused of murdering his father, and returns to try and clear her name.  This is paralleled with the story of Ann Eliza Webb Young, the 19th wife of Brigham Young who publicly divorced Brigham and fought for the abolition of polygamy.  One thing that I liked about this book is that I really couldn't figure out where the author stood.  At some points, it seemed like he was being kind of apologist for the LDS church and its role in the polygamous offshoots that still exist today, but at other points I felt like he was pointing out how oppressive and strange Mormonism was and is.  A book revealed to some random guy on golden plates, baptisms of the dead, guys with 50+ wives, sacred underwear...weird but also fascinating (hence the 4.5 hours of Sister Wives).  In my opinion, the author wrote an unbiased but still very entertaining story.  I just wish there had been more of the modern part - I really liked the main character Jordan and I missed him when I was reading all of the Ann Eliza parts.  The only thing that seemed really contrived with how the stories were tied together by Jordan meeting another character who happened to be writing a masters thesis on Ann Eliza, I thought the stories had enough connections and shared history without needing something that direct and artificial.
One very unique aspect of this book is the incorporation of different "sources" - the author tells the story in part through newspaper articles, letters, Wikipedia entries, diaries, depositions, and others.  All made up of course, so he really had to use a lot of different voices.  Obviously a 21st century teenager who is angry and hungry and scared (lots of f bombs) is going to be written very differently from a 19th century Mormon wife, mother, and authoress (no f bombs).  I think it's hard enough to create and give voice to one character, so I appreciate how much work this book must have been to research and write.
And finally, a note from Wikipedia - apparently a Lifetime tv movie starring Lexie Gray from Greys Anatomy based on this book premiered in September.  And no one told me!!!  It will not air again in the next 6 weeks, but I will keep checking the Lifetime website so stay tuned :)

Up Next: Hot Money by Dick Francis

The Lost Symbol

I went to Boston this past weekend, so I wanted to read something good for traveling that would be entertaining but require no effort on my part, and Dan Brown did not disappoint.  I was very impressed with his ability to keep me riveted with the plot and yet be beating a dead horse at the same time.  The last 50-60 pages of this book are completely unnecessary and overkill and I was losing interest at an exponential rate, but luckily I was back home at that point and didn't feel bad about skimming.  The main idea in this book is that because God created man in His image, the human mind has godlike powers, which the ancients knew and appreciated, but that modern people have forgotten and lost the ability to tap.

"This is the great gift, Robert, and God is waiting for us to understand it.  All around the world, we are gazing skyward, waiting for God ... never realizing that God is waiting for us.  . . .  We are creators, and yet we naively play the role of 'the created.' We see ourselves as helpless sheep buffeted around by the God who made us.  We kneel like frightened children, begging for help, for forgiveness, for good luck.  But once we realize that we are truly created in the Creator's image, we will start to understand that we, too, must be Creators.  When we understand this fact, the doors will burst wide open for human potential."

I think that's a fascinating, inspiring idea, and I like the point that if our ancestors could see us today communicating through computers, transplanting organs, exploring space, etc., wouldn't they think we were gods?  Pretty cool.   Unfortunately Dan Brown makes his characters discuss this point ad nauseum until you want to shake him and be like I GET IT, ENOUGH ALREADY, HOW STUPID DO YOU THINK YOUR READERS ARE?!

Also, I think it's kind of a cheap trick to make the ending of every single chapter be a cliffhanger.  It's kind of exhausting when every 6 pages, someone is turning around and gasping, eyes wide in fright, as they make some alarming discovery and nananabooboo, I'm not going to tell you what it is yet.  And italics lose their purpose when they're so overused.  I've also never read a book where the word "esoteric" is used so frequently.  Has anyone ever actually used esoteric in a sentence?  I looked it up and I still don't understand what it means.

But despite all that, I actually love books like this.  It's the literary equivalent of a really nerdy soap opera.  Plus I really like Dan Brown's bad guys - the albino monk in Da Vinci Code, and now in this book there's a crazy tattooed antagonist who is really freaky.  So if you want a good page-turner with cool historical trivia for geeks, then I recommend this book, just don't think about it too hard while you're reading and feel free to skip the last 50 pages.

Up Next: The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff