Audiobook Review: The Appeal by John Grisham

The Appeal by John Grisham has its own appeal right now, as read by Michael Beck, reviewed by Star Lawrence

With the economy crumbling around our poor little ears (have you priced the cost of going bankrupt lately? Trust me—you can’t afford to even go broke!), this David & Goliath story has magnetic charm. I could not wait to get back to it and click on the CD player, despite the slow Southern accents and occasionally blah-blah-blah Grisham style.

David is a Ma & Pa law firm in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, representing some downtrodden and dead cancer victims in a nearby “Cancer County” that had been drinking death water poisoned by an evil chemical company run by a Wall Street billionaire (natch).

OK, corny setup. But wait.

As the poor lawyers are continually harassed by mustache-twisting bankers wanting to call in their loans, the evil billionaire uses brute spending power to stack the deck in the state supreme court, which will be ruling on the huge verdict the Hattiesburg jury delivered in favor of the cancer victims. Why not just get a sympathetic justice elected and dump the woman who still had in interest in the “little guy”?

Of course, they find a family-first type who goes to church a few times a week and push him out there.

But what I wanted to know was—will the rich keep getting richer? See? I am a romantic!

I won’t tell you, although I did not love the deus ex machina Grisham came up with at the end. Ever feel like calling an author and yelling?

The reader Michael Beck is a favorite of mine and does the accents well without overplaying them into Foghorn T Leghorn territory.

Overall, this was a disk-flipper (my version of a page-turner). But my fists are still clenched. And you will see why.

Star Lawrence is a writer in Chandler, AZ, and can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com. Her audio reviews appear on http://chandlerazoo.blogspot.com and on http://thebookgrrl.blogspot.com.

Book Review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Skeeter Phelan is a young, white woman who’s graduated from Ole Miss in the early 1960’s. Directionless and bored living at home with her parents in Jackson, Mississippi she has plenty of time to observe and reflect on the southern tradition of white families employing black maids to run their households and raise their children. When an opportunity to write a book for Harper & Row arises Skeeter decides to enlist several black maids in Jackson to tell their stories of what it’s like to work for white families. Aibileen, the maid of Skeeter’s friend Elizabeth, agrees to help. Despite being fearful of losing their jobs and even their lives, many other maids, including Aibileen’s feisty best friend Minny, come to Skeeter with their stories and their book, despite several set-backs, is eventually written.
The Help is told from the multiple viewpoints of Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. Because of this we get both sides of the story – what it was like to be white and privileged in Jackson, and what it was like to be black and invisible. This novel is very much character-centered and Stockett does an amazing job of creating realistic and sympathetic characters. Her use of historical details helps draw the reader into this world and her measured pacing keeps you hooked until the very last page. Though tragic at times, the novel’s message is essentially hopeful. Read this if you like an engrossing story, well-drawn characters and tales of people turning tragedy into triumph. -Anbolyn (Downtown)

Book Group Spotlight

The Mystery Book Group at the Hamilton Library discusses mysteries every third Thursday of the month at 1:00 pm. They usually have 6-8 attendees and have been going strong for almost 8 years. They read a variety of mysteries from police procedurals to books featuring hard-boiled PIs or amateur sleuths and are always looking for new members. In March, they'll dicuss The Turnaround by George Pelecanos. You can pick up your copy of the book at the Hamilton information desk. For more information call 480-782-2828.


Hamilton Mystery Book Group
Meets every third Thursday of the month (March 19)
1:00 pm
Hamilton Library

Audiobook Review: Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow

Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow is a World War II story of extraordinary grit, read by Edward Herrmann, reviewed by Star Lawrence

My father served as a doctor on a destroyer off Iwo when the flag went up. My daughter’s father was in Laos and North Vietnam, not even South Vietnam, in the special forces in 1965. Both talked very little about it.

In Ordinary Heroes, Scott Turow tries to explore his own father’s experiences in World War II in a fictionalized form. His father, he says, in an interview afterward on disk, stopped talking about war when Turow entered his teen years—at that point, his father was talked out and had achieved whatever peace or compartmentalization or whatever he was trying to get or had given up on it. “What percent of what people tell us do we understand?” Turow says he once asked a professor. About 10%, they concluded.

The construct for this story is a son trying to find out why his father, a lawyer with the Judge Advocate General’s office in France, was almost executed in France for letting a dashing American OSS officer go when the latter was suspected of spying for the Russians at the end of World War II.

It is also a story of how Stewart Dubinsky’s father met his mother. The son had always been told, rather vaguely, that they met when his father entered a concentration camp, that she had been an inmate lucky enough to survive the horrors. But no.

This is a mystery, a love story, and a grim, horrid story of the ravages of war and madness.

Edward Herrmann handles the voices well, including the French/Polish accent of the beguiling resistance fighter Gita, who steals the book as Turow notes in his interview..

Not really “ordinary.” But heroes, yes. Maybe “Quiet Heroes,” would have been a better title.

Star Lawrence is a medical writer and reporter based in Chandler, AZ. Her other reviews and ramblings can be found on http://chandlerazoo.blogspot.com.

Black History Month

In honor of Black History Month, why not read a classic African-American novel? Listed below are several classic novels written by African-Americans that are owned by the Chandler Public Library system:

Another Country by James Baldwin

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest Gaines

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Jubilee by Margaret Walker

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

Native Son by Richard Wright

Quicksand and Passing by Nella Larsen

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

The Wedding by Dorothy West

The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

Book Review: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Juliet Ashton, a thirty-something, single writer lives in London just after World War II. She’s written a series of humorous articles about the war and is searching for an idea for a new book when she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams who lives on the island of Guernsey in the English Channel. Soon she is corresponding with several members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Increasingly fascinated with her new friends in Guernsey and the stories of how they survived during German occupation she sweeps off to visit the island and to meet its engaging, quirky inhabitants. Juliet soon realizes that she has ready-made friends on this special island and decides to stay while she works on her book.
This epistolary (written in the form of letters) novel is one of the best books I’ve read in a while. Though seemingly a “gentle” read it is a layered narrative that depicts the bravery, courage, and endurance the citizens of Guernsey exhibited during times of hardship. Despite its serious subject matter, this novel is upbeat, delightful and heartwarming. Don’t miss out!
-Anbolyn (Downtown)

Audiobook Review: Hollywood Crows by Joseph Wambaugh

Hollywood Crows by Joseph Wambaugh is retro, but a fun
listen anyway, read by Christian Rummel and reviewed by Star Lawrence

Stephen King threw Hollywood Crows on his “best of” list in Entertainment Weekly. I thought, “Joseph Wambaugh, wow, pretty Hill Street.” Turns out the precursor to Crows, Hollywood Station, had been Wambaugh’s first book in a decade.

At first, I was sort of cringing when I heard corny lines like “Hollywood, where men are men and so are the women,” but within two disks, I was hooked. Crows—the pronunciation of CRO—Community Relations Officer—do the PR work, schmoozing people with unauthorized people parked across their driveways or noisy neighbors who suddenly go quiet (that one did not end nicely).

They also interact with the “regular” cops from the Hollywood Station, including my favorites, two surfer cops nicknamed Flotsam and Jetsam. Their blab is hilarious, so Valley-guy and jargon-frontloaded, their follow cops treat them almost as lovable mascots. Yet, their weird gut feelings (“That house is seriously bad juju, bro.”) edge the story forward in its leisurely pace.

Weaving the elements together as only a master can, Wambaugh brings the cops into contact with Ali Aziz, a Middle-Eastern strip club owner, and his gorgeous honey-haired wife Margo, who is not as sweet as her hair.

Christian Rummel is a slightly nasal reader, hilarious as F&J (see above).

I wouldn’t say this story is exactly plot-driven, but it does end up someplace. And the trip is worth the hours. What more could you ask? I mean, what more could you ask, dude?

Star Lawrence owns the health humor site, Health’s Ass, at http://healthsass.blogspot.com. She can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com.